Class Guides

Black Desert Online – Crowd Control Guide

Crowd Control Guide

About

This guide was originally a portion of my Wizard PvP Basics & Matchup Guide. In order to condense that guide, and to eliminate information that would likely be redundant for intermediate players, I have decided to split off this portion into its separate portion.

Crowd Control

The term Crowd Control, or CC refers to any kind of status ailments that prevents you from normal operation of your character. Crowd Control is sorted into two main categories: Hard CC, and Soft CC.

Definitions

Hard CC – defined as any status ailment that completely prevents movement of your character. Examples below.

Stun – The character remains standing, but is unable to move or perform any actions for the duration of the stun.

Stiffen – The same effect as a Stun, but lasts for a shorter duration.

Knockback – The character is physically moved backwards from the point of impact, with a Stiffen effect applied at at the end.

Knockdown (KD) – The character is forced on the ground, and is unable to perform any actions. The character is flung backwards onto the ground, who, after a duration, rolls to get up. Often causes desync issues. A downed state.

Bound – Similar to the KD, but the character is instantly put on the ground, and stands up instead of rolling up. A downed state.

Freeze – The character is put in an ice cube, and is unable to move or perform any actions for the duration of the freeze. The freeze ends when the ice cube breaks, and the character is put into a Bound state. Frozen enemies take massively reduced damage while in the ice cube. However, damage over time effects deal full damage to frozen enemies. 

Float – The character is launched into the air for a brief duration, and ends up on the floor in a Bound state. A floating, and then downed state.

Grab – A CC extender. The grab picks up the targeted character, and puts the character down into a Bound, Float, or Knockdown state after a duration.

Down smash – A CC extender. When already in the downed state, the down smash reapplies a Bound state unto the target.

Air smash – A CC extender. When already in the floating state, the air smash reapplies a Float state unto the target.

Soft CC – loosely defined as any status ailment that prevents normal movement of your character, but does not cause total loss of control.

Slows – All sorts of slow, including casting, attack speed, and movement speed slow literally slows the characters animation. This may cause certain skill combinations to lose effectiveness.

Damage Multiplier – Certain skills have additional attributes that deal extra damage in specific situations. 

In addition to the 1.5x damage multiplier that is applied to attacks on the back, Down Attack (1.5x) and Air Attack (2.5x) are other common special attacks.

Crowd Control Order

In Black Desert Online, certain CC can only be applied in certain orders. Refer the following diagram.

CCPriorities.png


In summary, Stiffen, Stun, and Knockback can be repeated one after the other, never the same one twice, ad nauseam in what’s called a “stunlock” combo. The moment the character is knocked to the ground, then only down smash, grab, and well timed freezes can affect them.

Understanding this flow is crucial to setting up your own combos.

Crowd Control Prevention

With crowd control, comes crowd control prevention. 

Effective use of protect prevents regrets later down the line. 

Passive Resists

I won’t go into how accuracy and evasion works here, since this guide is meant to be focused more on class and player mechanics, instead of stat mechanics. That being said, just remember that if your skills aren’t hitting, then your CC aren’t hitting either.

PvP Crowd Control Resistance Hard Cap

A major thing to remember is that your Crowd Control Resistance caps at 60% for PvP. That means, if your resistances are over 60%, they are not being applied.

Notice that I didn’t say that resistances over 60% are useless. Crowd Control Resistance over 60% acts as a buffer. What this means, is that any Ignore Resistance stat that your opponent has will act on your resistances that are over 60% first. 

For example:
Opponent: 15% Ignore Resistances
You: 80% KD Resistance

80% – 15% = 65%
Since 65% > 60%

You have 60% Effective KDR

Another example:

Opponent: 15% Ignore Resistance

You: 70% KD Resistance

70% – 15% = 55%

Since 55% < 60%

You have 55% Effective KDR

In conclusion, although resistances above 60% are not actively being applied, it does help counter players with ample amounts of Ignore Resistance Stats.

Active Resists

Active resists are skills that are used actively by the player to make them immune to crowd control effects. Do note that these effects often bug out and do not apply.

Frontal Guard

Frontal guards works like an invisible shield in front of your character. The character is immune to damage and crowd control effects from the front

A small light blue shield icon will indicate the amount of frontal guard you have left. When this depletes to zero, the frontal guard will no longer be active. Damage towards the guard will deplete the meter.

Super Armor

Super armor works like an invisible armor that you wear. While super armor is in effect, the character takes reduced damage, and is invulnerable to all crowd control effects except for grabs.

Super armor cannot be broken down via damage. You must wait until the skill animation is complete.

Invincibility

Invincibility is just that: complete nullification of damage and crowd control effects of any kind while in duration of the invincibility effect.