Leveling Guide for new PvP players/accounts

Since I was already thinking of writing something about a leveling guide for players looking to mainly play endgame PvP in SGL, I thought that this would be the first article I would tackle given the fact that I very recently created and leveled a new character that played only PvP from level 6 to level 20.  Another player that's done the same recently is -IllidanRage, and I got his help to put together this article since he did things a little differently from my latest character (NabsulinCrAz), and I think I've arrived at the best method based on a blend of our approaches.

Before I begin, I wanted to highlight that the whole point of leveling a character in this way is to (1) obtain war points more easily than at level 20-27 since the gear advantages of level 27 players will yield a lot of deaths/losses/frustration for players trying to get geared up to be competitive and (2) maintain a high KDR before reentering PvP at level 27 after obtaining the Faraday Accelerator and other good pieces of armor.  This is certainly not the fastest way to get a character to level 27, since doing the campaign and side missions all along the way will result in the fastest leveling time.  Just to get it out of the way, to provide some stats on leveling time, here's what -IllidanRage had to do to reach level 27 in 3 days, 19 hours, and 29 minutes of play time, which he logged in about 2.5 weeks (average of about 4 hours per day).

The basic approach is that you will be a completely free to play user until you reach level 20 and then buy an XP booster at level 20 to make the grind from 20-27 as quick as possible.  From levels 1-6, you should complete all of the campaign/side/operations missions that are available to you.  When doing this, make sure to keep a hold of the AT Chekov S.E. auto rifle, the AT Anokhin Sniper Rifle, and the PZ-125 Ozymandias Machine Gun, which are all rewards that you get from completing certain missions on your way to level 6.  A short time after you hit level 6, you'll get enough XP to start queuing for Duels through Nitro.  At this point, you will be exclusively playing PvP until you reach level 20.  The queue times are not all that bad for duels, but Team PvP, which becomes available between level 15 and 16, can be touch and go.  Both -IllidanRage and I played only a handful (10-15) of Team PvP matches because it was a lot of sitting and waiting in the queue, whereas Duels provide faster matches.  I personally didn't keep a good record of how many matches I played, but -IllidanRage played a total of 364 PvP matches and accumulated 1,680 kills before reaching the XP level required to hit level 20.  To pique my jealousy even further, he did this while only accumulating 56 deaths to have a 30 KDR by the time he hit level 20.  As a counterpoint, I believe I only hit about a 19 KDR when I was leveling my NabsulinCrAz character in this fashion.  As for war points, both -IllidanRage and I noted that the drop rate for war points in duels is about 57-60% of the time, which means that you would need to win approximately 335-350 duels to obtain enough war points for the Faraday Accelerator.  Because I had purchased the starter bundle with my character, which came with an XP boost, I had only saved up about 1,980 war points on my NabsulinCrAz character, while -IllidanRage managed to save up 2,255, which is enough for Faraday and a chest piece.  This is the main reason why I think his approach is better for staying free to play until you hit level 20.

Once level 20 is reached, we recommend buying the 7 Day XP booster for $4.99 USD.  This gives a 50% boost to all XP gained, and by completing all of the campaign and side missions that were ignored after duels were unlocked at level 6, this was enough XP to get from level 20 to a little past level 25 (close to unlocking Arena Gold).  The next best source of XP is daily missions, which give around 7,000 XP per mission (over 10,000 XP with the XP booster), so make sure to do those along the way as well.  Also make sure to complete any of the dungeons for the first time, since you should have a mission from Nitro that awards some XP for completing the dungeon the first time through (unfortunately the Arenas only give a fame bonus for completing them the first time through).  Although it's most efficient at this point to grind the dungeons and arenas to start trying to obtain good gear for preparing for PvP, the fastest way to gain XP is to do Operations (blue) missions.  They usually last on average about 2 minutes per mission, and they award around 1,500 XP per mission (2,250 with the XP booster).  You'll have to do quite a lot of them (about 100+) to get all the XP that you need, and it is quite boring, but it is absolutely the fastest way to gain XP if your sole focus is reaching level 27.  Just to illustrate, -IllidanRage provided me with some stats of his, and he only did 4 arenas and 13 dungeons prior to reaching level 27.

After reaching level 27, then it purely becomes a waiting game for a good Faraday Accelerator to hit Nitro's shop as well as a grind for items that will make your character competitive in PvP.  As for getting a Sniper Rifle that will be competitive, you should ideally be looking for a Cryonic Scream with at least 1% base damage boost on it, but it would ideally have base damage, critical damage, iron sight damage, and magazine capacity on it.  Since Hive Mind is a little bit higher difficulty, and can take a while to grind, particularly with randoms, the Eyrie Special is a great stand-in that is more easily obtainable via the Blade Dancer dungeon.  In order for the Eyrie Special to be competitive, though, you will need to find one with at least 5% base damage on it.  Since Auto Rifles and Sniper Rifles are really the top choices in PvP, you don't really need to search for other weapons unless you want to potentially add some variety to your PvP game.  Blade Dancer, Arena Silver, and Arena Gold will be your top choices for gear grinding, since you'll be looking for good crit shoulders and an Eyrie Special from Blade Dancer, good Kira's Basilisk boots from Arena Silver, and a good Midnite's Invictus or Invictus/Basilisk chest from Arena Gold.

To further discuss strategy in PvP from levels 6-20, I wanted to highlight some of the weapon choices that are ideal to having the advantage over your opponent, but the real key to winning matches and accumulating a lot of kills with minimal deaths is to have good aim and smart tactics.  First and foremost, power level is irrelevant in PvP.  All weapons have their damage reduced to power level 0, so a 270 power Faraday Accelerator does the same base damage in PvP as a 170 power Faraday.  While power level is important for armor when it comes to PvE, all that matters for PvP is the set of perks, so always be looking to use the highest total crit damage shoulders, the pair of gloves that boost the accuracy of the weapons you use the most, the highest HP chest, the pair of legs that boost the magazine capacity of the weapons you use the most, and the pair of boots that has the best blend of crit damage, cooldown speed, and knockdown resistance.  On a side note, you should be looking for weapon damage and crit damage on gloves and crit damage and magazine capacity on legs, but MFG has yet to fix the perk bug that is currently in the game for these armor pieces.

As for primary weapons, I can't recommend the AT Chekov S.E. highly enough.  This rifle is the very first mission reward that you get from doing the campaign, and most people get rid of the rifle very quickly, which is a big mistake.  It has 11.9 base damage in PvP, a 400 fire rate, 17 base accuracy, and 29 base magazine capacity.  It is so user-friendly and just does higher DPS than virtually any other rifle that your opponent will bring to PvP before hitting level 20.  Just to give you an idea, it has a base DPS that is 3% higher than Niko's Stopper (before factoring in perks).  This should be your bread and butter weapon because it is so versatile and so powerful.  If you want to exploit a little pay-to-win element that is currently there for low level PvP, you can splurge for the Kosmicheskaya Bundle (1,500 gold), which will give you the AT Leonov auto rifle, which is guaranteed to have a 7% fire rate and 10% damage perk.  The Leonov has the same base damage as the Faraday Accelerator in PvP (12.6) but has a slightly slower fire rate (370 rounds per minute).  Since I had spare gold on one of my other characters, I gifted the bundle to NabsulinCrAz at around level 16 and the results were nothing short of unfair.  However, -IllidanRage proved that this is not necessary since he did not spend any money on the game other than buying the XP booster at level 20.  If you want to mix in usage of SMGs or Shotguns, the Chandra SMG (low level mission reward) and the Daruma B SMG (rare PvE drop) are the best options.  I managed to get a Daruma on my NabsulinCrAz account, but -IllidanRage said that he never managed to drop one as he did virtually no PvE between level 6 and 20.  As for Shotguns, the PZ-75D Gold Label (PvP drop) and PZ-808TRE MAG 9 (Willow's shop) are your best options.  I never dropped a Gold Label, but looking at the stats that -IllidanRage provided me, it has a slightly faster fire rate than the MAG 9, while sharing the same damage (50.4 per blast, 6.3 per pellet).  Some weapons worth an honorable mention are the Rasputin, Novikov, and Somov auto rifles because of their higher damage per shot than the Chekov S.E., but beware of the significantly slower fire rate.  The Sybadyne rifle can also do some damage due to its very high base accuracy and the PZ-42 Rebel is also a decent alternative if you want an AR that behaves like an SMG due to its having a high fire rate.  The Rebel is a reward during the campaign/side missions, so if you follow this approach to the letter, you won't have it, but if you want to mix in some PvE, you can obtain this rifle quickly enough and it will perform reasonably well in PvP.

As for Secondary Weapons, neither -IllidanRage nor I share much love for rocket launchers because you get such limited ammo, especially in duels.  Machine Guns are easier to use, and the PZ-125 Ozymandias is a great option for that, but Sniper Rifles are where it's at if you want to dispatch your opponent quickly and train for competitive endgame PvP where sniper usage is widespread.  The AT Anokhin sniper rifle is a reward that you get in missions before level 6, and it carries a 97.9 base damage in PvP, so if you're lucky enough to get an iron sight damage perk on the gun, you can push its damage above 100 in PvP.  Because most players pick the chest piece that is the highest power level (not necessarily with the highest HP level) and haven't upgraded their skill tree yet, you will actually find plenty of opponents who have HP of 100, so the Anokhin sniper can dispatch them with one body shot hit.  Even if it doesn't kill them, switching to a fast firing pistol like the PZ-43K Finality (10.4 base damage) will let you finish them off in 1-2 shots.  Another sniper that I had never come across was the AT Sudba MA, which -IllidanRage said he believed he dropped while doing an operation mission to unlock the damage perks on a new piece of gear at level 14.  The Sudba does slightly lower damage than the AT Anokhin sniper, since its base damage is 95.9, but when you're able to go to the Bar of War after unlocking it between levels 13 and 14, the 6% damage boost that you get will actually push the Sudba's damage above 100 for a hipfire shot, so you can still encounter opponents that will die to a single body shot from this sniper.  The significant advantage that it has over the AT Anokhin sniper is that the Sudba has a base magazine capacity of 9, so it gives you a lot more room for error than the Anokhin's unforgivingly small magazine size (6).

Other than weapons, the only other topic to cover is the skill tree.  For endgame PvP, I always say that a PvP build needs to have a baseline of 9A-0C-2S at the very least in order to be competitive.  Both -IllidanRage and I followed this logic when allocating skill points along the way.  Since we both were shooting to have a skill build of 13A-0C-7S by the time we reached level 27, points were spent with that end in mind.  While we spent points along the way a little differently, I prefer his approach, which was to spend 5 points in Agility first in order to gain a lot of the mobility skills to increase speed, then spend 2 points in Survival to gain some extra health, then spend 8 points in Agility, then spend the remaining 5 points in Survival.  Supercharger and Survival Kit will be your go-to skills until you unlock Frag Grenades, then Frag Grenades should take your second skill slot.  -IllidanRage did decide to mess around with Blink a little bit there at the end of his PvP activity, but we all know how the community feels about that skill.  As for what to watch out for with your opponents, perhaps the biggest thing is the Rocket Man skill because there are quite a few opponents that will use it to surprise you if you are rushing a lot at a weaker opponent.  There were certainly plenty of idiots that used Shockwave, but I can't remember ever dying to someone ignorant enough to use this terrible skill.

As for some miscellaneous bit of strategy, I'll cover perk unlocking and inventory management briefly.  -IllidanRage employed a brilliant strategy of utilizing a Kill Zone operation mission to unlock the first two perks on any new piece of armor he obtained that was an improvement over the one he had been using.  Instead of completing the mission and getting the XP from it, he just killed enemies, aborted the mission instead of turning it in, and restarted the mission until the damage perks were unlocked.  This method ensures that you don't level up too quickly and maximize the number of war points you obtain prior to hitting level 20.  As for inventory management, since you will be a free to play user until you hit level 20, you'll have to keep a lean inventory.  Based on what -IllidanRage told me, he kept around 8 weapons in inventory and 5-8 armor pieces at all times.  What was equipped were the weapons and armor he used for PvP and then the pieces held in inventory typically represented the other weapons that are good for PvP if you want to add some variety and the highest power level item that he had yet obtained so that as he leveled up, he could equip the highest level power items he had to keep upgrading skills along the way, then he would switch back to his PvP loadout.  Any unwanted items were sold rather than dismantled as it takes a buttload of cash to upgrade all your skills along the way.  You can start dismantling stuff to use for infusion later once you max out your skill tree at level 27.

Just because it was an interesting point to me, I'll also mention the armor pieces that -IllidanRage showed me he obtained and used for his PvP setup since most endgame players complain about how trash the loot is in the PvP lottery.  While the results certainly were underwhelming to an endgame player, when you look at it relative to what other players are using at low levels, it's actually quite good.

Shoulders: 9% crit, PvP drop

Gloves: 7% AR accuracy, 6% pistols accuracy, 7% sniper accuracy, PvP drop

Chest: 28% HP, PvP drop at level 19 (was previously using a 10% HP chest that was also a PvP drop)

Legs: 24% pistol mag, 20% AR mag, PvE drop at level 3

Boots: 35% knockdown resist, 3% cooldown, PvP drop at level 12

Well there you have it.  This ended up being quite a bit longer than I originally thought it was going to be, but I hope it is enlightening for anyone that is starting a new account in SGL, whether for the purpose of padding KDR :) or beginning their first account.  I'll tackle some more articles from the suggestions I received on Facebook as time allows.  Happy hunting!

P.S. A big thank you to -IllidanRage for sharing an incredible amount of detail with me on his journey to level 27.  Looking forward to crushing you on the battlefield!