How to deal with organised min/max (ball) groups who want to farm you

Crown

https://darkelves.com/how-to-win-vs-ball-groups/

After watching a group of 14 EP run circles around Fare farming 50+ AD for 20 minutes, I updated the last part for the solo/small players who have no idea what they're doing.

Copy paste of the new part:
----
SOLO PLAYERS & SMALL GROUPS

The most important points to understand are:

• As a solo player or small group, you’re probably not going to be able to wipe a well structured min/maxed organised ball group.
• Their goal is almost always going to be farming AP and getting as many kills as they can.
• Once they see that they’re not going to have an easy time farming random people, they’ll move somewhere else.
• Your criteria for success (winning) should not be killing them all, it should be something along the lines of making it so tough and irritating for them to farm pugs (decreasing their AP per hour to less than PvDoor activities) that they have no choice but to go elsewhere (or rage quit). With that in mind, read through the following points and consider best how you can contribute to the fight.
• Don’t stack together. That just makes you a target, and even if you don’t die from their damage, the Vicious Death procs from other people around you will kill you.
• The majority of their damage comes from AoE, so if you can get the major and minor evasion buffs (25% and 10% less AoE damage respectively) that will help your survivability.
• Most players use one defensive set, one offensive set, and a monster set. Whatever it is that you use normally, while fighting a ball group you should consider swapping some of your sets (details on the link). Once you’re done fighting the opposing ball group, swap back to your regular gear!
• Keep snares down on all sides of them. Caltrops and Gripping Shards (Warden) are a good choices. They will have people spamming Retreating Manoeuvres, though every time one of them casts or does damage that buff is removed – and they’ll be snared or slowed slightly. This helps keep them less structured and may help isolate a straggler.
• Use time stop. Then use it again. Keep using it. You have no idea how irritating and disruptive it is.
• Use knock backs. If the opposing group are running around the top of a wall or keep, knocking a few off where they can’t get back in (because you’ve already repaired behind them) will make the rest jump off to get everyone back together. They may re-siege, but that wastes their time.
• Call out their healer’s names (/yell) and tab target them. Single target burst those healers, and the rest of the group will have a tougher time. An even better target is their Retreating Manoeuvres spammer, as if you can take that person out then the group will be a lot more challenged in their movement.
• Keep siege on them. If you’re alone, the damage you can do with siege is a lot more than with your skills (ultimate excluded).
• If you see them proxy and run towards you (usually with ults), run through them not away from them. That will reduce the time you spend standing in their ults, and they will rarely stop to kill you as they’re all following their leader. if you can get some snares in while moving (Gripping Shards is amazing for this), it will help de-ball them for a few seconds!

Remember that your goal is not necessarily to kill them, but to make it so challenging for them to achieve their goal of (easy) kills and enough AP (to make it worth the time) that they will go away. Killing them should be seen as an added bonus.

Sandman929

Interesting, a lot of this can be summed up as "be in an organized group yourself", no?

Crown

Sandman929 wrote: »

Interesting, a lot of this can be summed up as "be in an organized group yourself", no?

That's why I was specific about what solo/small groups can do at the end.

VaranisArano

My method when I'm zerg-surfing by myself as a healer is to judge how likely my fellow random players are to work together vs the farming raid.

If my fellows are playing semi-organized by attacking the farming group en masse or defending the siege, then I'm going to back up my faction with heals and siege. Usually I lay scattershot siege, heal during pushes, or defend the siege line.

If my faction is just getting farmed because they aren't working together or failing to defend me on siege, or they are falling for the old pull-em-back-to-a-choke-point-for-the-kill tactic again and again, I'm going to go do something else after a while. There's not much one healer can do to change the outcome of that situation and I find it frustrating to watch my faction do the same thing over and over expecting a different result.

Sandman929 wrote: »

Interesting, a lot of this can be summed up as "be in an organized group yourself", no?

ESO's PVP is very geared towards organized groups by design. So naturally, the best way to defeat an organized group is to work together. Just like in Battlegrounds, a random group that sticks together and focuses their offense is going to do better vs a premade group than a group that each plays their own way and gets taken apart piecemeal.

In Cyrodiil, random players work together to take objectives all the time. Its pretty much the same idea with taking down a farming group - random players need to work together and play smart. This is a pretty good guide for how to work together and play smart vs a farming group.

pzschrek

STAHP it @Crown , the last time you posted this we started getting negated on rams all the damn time

Tommy_The_Gun

How can I stop ball groups from curseing me with "still in combat" bug ? I don't deal dmg to them, they don't deal dmg o me...
All it takes is just for them to be near me and all the sudden I am in combat... even when they are camping resources and I seat at inner keep...

Crown

Tommy_The_Gun wrote: »

How can I stop ball groups from curseing me with "still in combat" bug ? I don't deal dmg to them, they don't deal dmg o me... All it takes is just for them to be near me and all the sudden I am in combat... even when they are camping resources and I seat at inner keep...

You have to buy the "End Combat Scroll" from the Crown store.

EDIT: We all know about this bug. Hopefully the ZOS team will fix it in the next few years.

WaltherCarraway

bleh bleh bleh bleh ... Get yourself into a group with a healer

Curtdogg47

My favorite thing as a solo player when I come across these groups is to hit them from range then go stealth and move and hit them again. Once I find the squishy targets in the group I focus on them. Sometimes you can get the whole group chasing you around. Other times the group will stand on the resource flag going in and out of stealth. I wonder what that means? : )

DivineFirstYOLO

@Crown Aren't you the infamous guy that is stacking multiple groups at one location? If people like you would stop zerging so much, ball groups wouldn't even need to exist.

Crown

DivineFirstYOLO wrote: »

@Crown Aren't you the infamous guy that is stacking multiple groups at one location? If people like you would stop zerging so much, ball groups wouldn't even need to exist.

@DivineFirstYOLO Every single zerg on every single faction is automatically attributed to me.

zyk

When a competent ball group like Drac is farming an objective and my faction does not have any groups on, my advice to my fellow randoms is to just avoid them. Opt out of their circle beef jerky.

I actually love fighting organized groups as a random. As recently as 3.0, individuals could make a big difference. But over the past year, changes to the game have made ball groups extremely OP again.

I think hyper-competitive guilds should consider that they play on a public server with players of all types including new and casual players. When there aren't like groups on for them to compete against, they should be better sports about it.

It's toxic for the growth of the game for highly organized competitive guilds to stomp new and casual players relentlessly and ESO AvA is obviously already dying.

Aztlan

No, that guy is Crow. May his name live in infamy.

Good work, Crown. I hope a lot of people read this.

Marcus684

One thing I’d like to add. If you’re gonna be the hero dropping a meatbag catapult behind them when they’re running the walls, you better be ready to roll off and get out of their way, because that seems to be the only solo player a ball group will consistently focus down.

DivineFirstYOLO

Aztlan wrote: »

No, that guy is Crow. May his name live in infamy.

Good work, Crown. I hope a lot of people read this.

Alright, thanks for clearing this. @Crown sorry for mistaking you with the other guy.

Vapirko

zyk wrote: »

When a competent ball group like Drac is farming an objective and my faction does not have any groups on, my advice to my fellow randoms is to just avoid them. Opt out of their circle beef jerky.

I actually love fighting organized groups as a random. As recently as 3.0, individuals could make a big difference. But over the past year, changes to the game have made ball groups extremely OP again.

I think hyper-competitive guilds should consider that they play on a public server with players of all types including new and casual players. When there aren't like groups on for them to compete against, they should be better sports about it.

It's toxic for the growth of the game for highly organized competitive guilds to stomp new and casual players relentlessly and ESO AvA is obviously already dying.

But, but, but, everyone should get to play how they want. Is legitimate playstyle, requires much skill. Only select few can survive with multiple earthgore, and learn to spam one or two skills.

frozywozy

My favorite passages :

- These groups prey on the weak, unskilled
- Once they see that they’re not going to have an easy time farming random people, they’ll move somewhere else
- Remember that your goal is not necessarily to kill them, but to make it so challenging for them to achieve their goal of (easy) kills

You are a true champion, Crown, you summed it all up.

Adenoma

@Vapirko , I think most (if not all) of the people in the top ball guilds are at least decent soloists. A person pressing one button for group isn’t a person I would want in raid, except maybe a rapids spammer - but they’ll be out of juice quickly and I would rather just have a solid player doing that.

Vapirko

Adenoma wrote: »

@Vapirko , I think most (if not all) of the people in the top ball guilds are at least decent soloists. A person pressing one button for group isn’t a person I would want in raid, except maybe a rapids spammer - but they’ll be out of juice quickly and I would rather just have a solid player doing that.

Then maybe I just don't come across them. All of the ball guilds/groups I've seen have a small handful or just a few good players and then most don't seem to know which way is up once separated. Ive always been anti this play style since the destro train meta was in full force and ruined Sotha, unless it's really relegated to small/medium sized groups of maybe 8 people. To me it doesn't matter if you're skilled soloists or not. If you want to take your group and go engage other ball guilds/groups or giant pug zergs, then awesome, more power to you. But if y'all just roll up to destroy a handful of pugs or PvDoor... well I'll refrain from using expletives. I admit I only see one side of it, but that side is usually trying to rally a few players to defend a keep against a ball guild and there's just very little counter play available, especially now that mobility took such a hard hit and ball groups thrive off of using AOE snares and damage. Yes groups should have an advantage in numbers and skills available, but as we know all the changes lately have favored groups so you're not only getting the numbers and coordination advantage, you have the abilities working in your favor as well. And frankly most people just crutch off of that fact. It is what it is, all is fair in love and open world PvP. Doesn't mean I have to like it though.

technohic

Yeah go somewhere else is usually best. I ducked back and just watched the other night. Couldn't believe how many people would resoawn and run back to try to range them down. Really hard to focus a single target so unless you're in an organized group yourself; you're just feeding them ultimate for their next dump.

ShadowProc

Your forgot one. Tab target Zos since they continue to nerf small mans and buff zergs

And Frozen he hit the nail on the head. You absolutely target condensed groups of ungrouped bad players to see how many you can wipe at a time and how much AP u can get.

Even better when there are two factions worth of ungrouped condensed bad players.

Nice try.

Rin_Senya

Crown wrote: »

Their goal is almost always going to be farming AP
Your criteria for success (winning) should not be killing them all, it should be something along the lines of making it so tough and irritating for them to farm pugs (decreasing their AP per hour to less than PvDoor activities)
Remember that your goal is not necessarily to kill them, but to make it so challenging for them to achieve their goal of (easy) kills and enough AP (to make it worth the time) that they will go away.

Lel I don't even remember when was the last time I was looking at my ap/h being in organized 12-16 m group or really thinking that it's our "goal". It was like 2-3 years ago mb. AP doesn't mean anything in this game whatsoever.

Minno

Crown wrote: »

DivineFirstYOLO wrote: »

@Crown Aren't you the infamous guy that is stacking multiple groups at one location? If people like you would stop zerging so much, ball groups wouldn't even need to exist.

@DivineFirstYOLO Every single zerg on every single faction is automatically attributed to me.

I haven't heard that since Jauriel was in the same TS at the same time as me lol

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO

ShadowProc wrote: »

Your forgot one. Tab target Zos since they continue to nerf small mans and buff zergs

And Frozen he hit the nail on the head. You absolutely target condensed groups of ungrouped bad players to see how many you can wipe at a time and how much AP u can get.

Even better when there are two factions worth of ungrouped condensed bad players.

Nice try.

As GM and raid lead of Drac, our goal is never focused on 'farming AP'. I'm guessing the fight Crown is talking about there were 12 of us vs those AD it was a challenge managing to take the keep in those situations. That time we managed it, others we haven't.

If we wanted to simply farm AP there are far simpler ways of doing that. Killing multiple respawned players inside their own keep doesn't grant much if any AP and the tick at the end isn't really worth much to either side for the time investment however there is a good feeling of accomplishment to be had from defeating those numbers and capturing the objective.

Ofc any successful action in pvp is generally going to bring decent AP, just that in comparison to what we could do its not 'amazing' AP.
As an example, one of our goals is to find and fight enemy groups (we also aim to take on as many players as we can before we die). This generally awards very little AP because once you kill a group once or twice they aren't giving AP any more.

Derra

frozywozy wrote: »

My favorite passages :

- These groups prey on the weak, unskilled
- Once they see that they’re not going to have an easy time farming random people, they’ll move somewhere else
- Remember that your goal is not necessarily to kill them, but to make it so challenging for them to achieve their goal of (easy) kills

You are a true champion, Crown, you summed it all up.

Rare to see as much honesty on the forums.

Sharee

I'd like to add:

- if you are a DK, use your chains to pull individual members back and into the chasing crowd while their ball rushes forward. Plus points if you get someone with destro ult running, lowering the ball's AOE output. The pulled usually just mistforms back, but sometimes he cant get back to the safety of his ball in time.

- if you are a WW, you have a fear that hits six targets! Also, WW has one of the few sources of AOE major defile. Their purge spam can counter it of course, but hitting them at a critical moment can still make a difference.

geonsocal

aw man, this thread is making me miss those tower resource doors...

those were the good ol' days for sure...

Iskras

To solved it:

Left the keep and wait the ZERGball left.

End!

gepe87

Just ignore them.

IxSTALKERxI

Not everyone is as big of an AP *** as you crown. Some people pvp for fun, and not just AP.

It's not a matter of making their AP / hr low that will make them go somewhere else. But making it frustrating to get kills will make it less fun, and may result them to go somewhere else. For example, I know how frustrating it can be chasing solo stamina builds around buildings and los, attempting to kill them with builds optimized for aoe... If the only opponents to kill were all spread out, tanky and running around obstacles forcing them to aoe down 1 person at a time... then yeah, they will probably go find a fight somewhere else out of frustration of trying to wipe stamtards, but not because of lack of ap gains.

technohic

I could see where it's fun to wipe big zergs bu a lot of the ball groups I see have a guy zipping out in front at times to just stun and root individuals to run them over. Not sure how that's fun for so long. It's like beating up a hooker in GTA. Funny once or twice; but really not beneficial