A PvP built pirate. I recommend ranking 5 in Blade Storm, viper's brace, sidewinder (dagger), 5 in Seige Charge (grenade), in flaming skull/wither for the staff, and for passives, 5 in endurance, parry, blade instinct, and spirt mastery. These work mate, I usually use the sword in a PvP and a guildie of mine uses grenades, and from what I saw, both are the PvP weapons of choice (in my opinion). The top ranked PvP pirates on the DxD leaderboards, some of them I PvPed, DO NOT use dolls as far as I know! This proves something mates. Heh, well the sword and grenades are the most powerful to use, because with a staff, you run out of voodoo too fast, a pistol is too hard to aim, dolls, I'll explain that later in the post, daggers are good to use also.
For the doll, I would recommend avoiding using this. Although we are pirates, the doll is more of PvPing the easy way, grave shackles, life drain.... Think about their effects.
But unless your opponent or opponents all use them, heck I would play tag with the doll throughout the entire PvP!
In a PvP, practice alone makes little to no difference, trust me, personal experience.
You can move your pirate in an evasive way where the other can't touch you and you just keep hitting them until they die, but this takes MAJOR practice and determination. It's just my opinion, but a PvP built pirate would be easier.