Best Way to Counter Winning PvP Strategy?

Steelshiv

I was fighting in Cyrodiil today, and while I was running around in a frozen world state I wanted to take some screenshots of the positioning of the enemy faction.



I blurred or marked out the names and faces of the enemy faction for their privacy and to adhere to forum rules. How does a group of players counter this winning strategy if CC/snares/AoE wont fire due to the immense lag that stacking half of a faction causes? It's so bad I cant play during certain times.

Vapirko

You join an equally big zerg and hope that your snares and aoe kill them first while people fire absurd amounts of siege and no one can really see or do anything and at least some people are guaranteed to DC.

Or, avoid these kinds of fights altogether and go to other fights besides the main one if they exist.

Ackwalan

1) Don't stand in front of a charging zerg.
2) The zerg can't be everywhere, go where they are not.
3) Don't get tunnel vision, going after the same resource that is being defended by a zerg, is only helping them.

Ruckly

Log onto your bomber and bomb them. I ran into a group like this today and I haven't seen so many earthgore procs before. Logged onto my bomber and there were gone nothing to bomb. Waited a while when something did finally showed up to get bombed I got a nasty DOS that knocked out my internet. Some people who play this are crazy.

mayasunrising

It depends on who's running the zerg. If it's Dracrys I personally don't even bother engaging. Especially when they do their thing where they take a keep and just keep running around inside it. My gaming time is time I take for me...to have fun and enjoy myself. I find what they do, and trying to counter them WAY boring.

Beardimus

Why people persist in playing on Vivec i don't know. How is this even fun.

OP go to Shor or Sotha, unsure how it is on your platform but for me its the best fights

frozywozy

Apparently this is what most people enjoy doing nowadays. Playing with as many as possible and zerg people down while the enemy cannot cast skills or weapon swap or dodge roll or cc break because the server is melting. People don't care if the server is lagging crazy because they win in most scenarios. Even if those large groups are lagging too, in the end they still have more healing and damage potential and wins the fights.

If someday servers get more responsive and give a chance to the opposition to cast skills, they will most likely lose in 90% of the scenarios because people playing with 3full raids stacked on each other don't learn anything and never really improve at the game. As a result, they are not effective whatsoever and die very quick when not carried by everyone else.

I'm not saying that I am not being carried when I play with a 16men group, but at least I try to seek fights where I will be outnumbered, or fighting the same amount of people, pushing my limits and challenging myself to get better.

memofin

Ps4 eu shor is the same. Vivec is lagfest, but lately shor isn't any better. Red players just comes from vivec to shor when they have killed that campaing and do the same in shor. It's horrible, makes pvp almost impossible, whole server starts to lagg and reds wont stop until they have every keep and towns. There is nothing anyone can do, there is just too many pees in that zerg/zergs. After they have done that, they go back to vivec and the cycle starts over. Then there are players in the pact who organise those group and takes pride in killing the whole campaing. Sigh.

visionality

This is the playstyle ZOS itself is propagating by their gaming design. The more ppl form a zerg the higher their survivability, their power and their rewards. Not sure why ZOS thinks this is attractive - especially considering that their own servers cannot deal with those zergfests - but throughout the last years they have introduced more and more stuff that is stacking up in usefulness the bigger the crowd becomes. Earthgore being the most prominent example, I think.

If ZOS wanted to motivate ppl to de-zerg they needed to introduce things that would damage big masses of ppl just for being big masses. Maybe a sort of plague that starts spreading whenever more than 35 ppl mass up in a 28m radius, spreading much like the disease dots of Sanctum Ophidia.

IxSTALKERxI

Steelshiv wrote: »

I was fighting in Cyrodiil today, and while I was running around in a frozen world state I wanted to take some screenshots of the positioning of the enemy faction.



I blurred or marked out the names and faces of the enemy faction for their privacy and to adhere to forum rules. How does a group of players counter this winning strategy if CC/snares/AoE wont fire due to the immense lag that stacking half of a faction causes? It's so bad I cant play during certain times.

I think I can see Frozn soloing in that pic.

Rake

To win one must have more sieges and bigger zerg. Thats all.

Ahtu

Steelshiv wrote: »

How does a group of players counter this winning strategy

How do you defeat an army? Form your own army and have competent raid leads. An army of sheep led by a lion is better than an army of lions led by a sheep.

technohic

When Army of the Packet Loss is on; you cannot fire abilities anywhere in Cyrodiil reliably.

technohic

Actually sitting here thinking and DC once again is struggling to pop lock on Vivec, AD at least pop locks there so I am not sure where their "army" is but I guess I am kind of glad they don't go to the EP AOTP extreme. Then there is EP seemingly dominating pops on most campaigns. Is it really that many shallow Skyrimers or is there a bandwagon of low character people taking the easy way after that started?

_Crow

Steelshiv wrote: »

I was fighting in Cyrodiil today, and while I was running around in a frozen world state I wanted to take some screenshots of the positioning of the enemy faction.



I blurred or marked out the names and faces of the enemy faction for their privacy and to adhere to forum rules. How does a group of players counter this winning strategy if CC/snares/AoE wont fire due to the immense lag that stacking half of a faction causes? It's so bad I cant play during certain times.

Hey! That's us! 😃

ScruffyWhiskers

Concentration of force is a fundamental principle of war on the strategic, operational and tactical levels. A famous Chinese general once wrote a treatise on this:

"We can form a single united body, while the enemy must split up into fractions. Hence there will be a whole pitted against separate parts of a whole, which means that we shall be many to the enemy's few."

The Cyrodiilic Translation is something like

"Zerg them when they cannot Zerg you."

My personal favorite is:

"In Death's Ground Zerg them hard."

Minnesinger

_Crow wrote: »

Steelshiv wrote: »

I was fighting in Cyrodiil today, and while I was running around in a frozen world state I wanted to take some screenshots of the positioning of the enemy faction.



I blurred or marked out the names and faces of the enemy faction for their privacy and to adhere to forum rules. How does a group of players counter this winning strategy if CC/snares/AoE wont fire due to the immense lag that stacking half of a faction causes? It's so bad I cant play during certain times.

Hey! That's us! 😃

And the names were blurred as if someone didn´t know that anyways. Oh the glory for the pact and very little blood.

Nutshotz

Idk why people have issues with drac over AoTP.

Drac
-extremely well organized guild that has been playing together for a long time
- very well coordinated
- they adapt to each other's play style
- they run to benefit the group not themselves. That's skills and set wise


AoTP
- ran by ego players
- stack 3 plus raids together
- doesn't benefit each other
- refuses to learn game mechanics


Am I bashing AoTP nope. They have knowledge players and actually really decent/friendly players as well.

Will I promote 12-16 man group playstyle yes.

Oh what the hell I'm gonna go drink my bleach now. This is useless

ScruffyWhiskers

I love them both and EP needs them both. You need shock troopers and special forces. The game gets static if nobody has some organized groups mixing things up. You will spend the whole day running between Bleaks and either Chal or Ales and on the other side Sej and Brk or Alessia if you just a random EP guy like me.

zyk

Steelshiv

_Crow wrote: »

Hey! That's us! 😃

Whether that is you or not in that pic, can you agree that it would be more fun to spread out and have an epic battle in and around the keep/rss/outpost/rocks/etc?

It's unfortunate that stacking raids on each other is the meta and has been for as long as I can remember. It wouldn't be a problem if the servers could handle it, but they cant.

I used to run in coordinated, raid stacked groups like this before and it gets really old. Really quickly. "Stack on Crown to the right of the breach. Okay we're going to push in and go back flag. AoE as we pass through, stuns, and ulti bomb when I tell you. Buff up. Immovables. Rapids, Push." *Defenders downstairs on siege are melted or disconnect* "Stack on crown. Okay, we're going to the right, up the stairs, going to sweep across the second floor, back down the stairs, and to front flag, buff up, immovables, rapids, go." If there is any resistance during you regroup, restack, push through, heal, push back. I always had more fun when there was some tactic involved. Like, one group focuses them while another group stealths and positions behind, then attacks.

Beardimus wrote: »

Why people persist in playing on Vivec i don't know. How is this even fun.

Last night there were people leaving/logging off because of this which hurts the faction.

Ruckly wrote: »

Log onto your bomber and bomb them.

That sounds like fun but I was bombed four times last night alone and survived every attempt by just blocking, buffing, then killing bomber. Also, with a group like this the aoe would melt you before you got close or at least one would survive to rez/camp down.

In the end I don't have a problem with any of these guilds or members. I don't mind losing or getting wiped when an interesting/clever/well played tactic is used. It just encourages me to play smarter and get my own team together.

Ruckly

If you are trying to counter EP and you play AD you and your 16 man ball group could log onto your DC toons and run an EP scroll from Alesworth to Fare. I've seen it done by EP it works. They have logged onto AD toons and ran a DC scroll from an AD keep after it was breached by DC up to Arrius. If you run a very hard to kill ball group you can game the system in all different kinds of ways. You don't even have to fight 3 raid stacks.

Gilvoth

Steelshiv wrote: »

i just wanted to point something out about this picture above ^

i did not make that photo, and i am not talking about the person whom made this picture photo.
note: this has NOTHING to do with the person whom took the photo.

what i am pointing out, is the fact that those 2 yellow faction characters are all alone against a big group of red players.
and obviously they are going to die, why? because is a whole lot of Red players against just those 2 yellow players, yet what happens here on this forum every single day, is that normaly on a daily basis, 1 of those 2 yellow players is going to come to this forum and make a thread asking that what ever skill or weapon or or snipe or earthgore armor or sneak invisibility, or heavy armor, or wings, or healing, or light armnor, or sloads, or medium armor passive, or warewolf damage, or assylum weapon, or Master weapon, or ANYTHING whatsoever that was the final blow that killed them in the above picture situation above, was and is OBVIOUSLY "to them" is Overpowered and MUST BE NERFED!
i mean they HAVE to be able to survive an entire LARGE GROUP like that or the game is COMPLETELY imbalanced and the entire staff of eso and all of the rest of us are just garbage players because we cant see and agree with them that what ever killed them in that situation above is ovepowered.
when infact nothing was over powered, all that was over powered was that alot of the other alliance killed them and they were outnumbered was the only real thing that killed them.

i hope one day that all of this forum members and all of eso members and all the staff and developers of the entire elderscrolls online community will see this trend and realize how it has caused massive nerfs and destroyed build after build and class after class just because 1 or a few people come to this forum and make threads continuously about things that killed them that MUST BE NERFED and that this has been going on now for YEARS.

please zenimax, please make this stop happening.

Ruckly

Gilvoth wrote: »

Steelshiv wrote: »

i just wanted to point something out about this picture above ^

i did not make that photo, and i am not talking about the person whom made this picture photo.
note: this has NOTHING to do with the person whom took the photo.

what i am pointing out, is the fact that those 2 yellow faction characters are all alone against a big group of red players.
and obviously they are going to die, why? because is a whole lot of Red players against just those 2 yellow players, yet what happens here on this forum every single day, is that normaly on a daily basis, 1 of those 2 yellow players is going to come to this forum and make a thread asking that what ever skill or weapon or or snipe or earthgore armor or sneak invisibility, or heavy armor, or wings, or healing, or light armnor, or sloads, or medium armor passive, or warewolf damage, or assylum weapon, or Master weapon, or ANYTHING whatsoever that was the final blow that killed them in the above picture situation above, was and is OBVIOUSLY "to them" is Overpowered and MUST BE NERFED!
i mean they HAVE to be able to survive an entire LARGE GROUP like that or the game is COMPLETELY imbalanced and the entire staff of eso and all of the rest of us are just garbage players because we cant see and agree with them that what ever killed them in that situation above is ovepowered.
when infact nothing was over powered, all that was over powered was that alot of the other alliance killed them and they were outnumbered was the only real thing that killed them.

i hope one day that all of this forum members and all of eso members and all the staff and developers of the entire elderscrolls online community will see this trend and realize how it has caused massive nerfs and destroyed build after build and class after class just because 1 or a few people come to this forum and make threads continuously about things that killed them that MUST BE NERFED and that this has been going on now for YEARS.

please zenimax, please make this stop happening.

Wrong. The hard counter to this is Inevitable Detonation in the alliance war assault skills. If there are to many players in the area the cast time goes from 1.5 seconds to 10 seconds if it goes off at all. If you have 10 people casting 10 Inevitable Detonation and it takes them 10 seconds to get the cast off they will be dead while still casting.

idk

Obviously numbers against numbers help but then you are still leaving it to RNG. A smaller group can take out a larger group if well commanded and they listen well. We used to see this more often early in the game but I think we have few left that can command in a manner needed when going up against 20+ players.

It takes a coordinated group. Players using the skills and ultimates when they are told to use and when it come to ultimates they use it when they are told to use it. For someone to command well enough they have to be able to read the situation well and have a group and listens and executes well. That is not a group formed from zone chat.

Ruckly

idk wrote: »

Obviously numbers against numbers help but then you are still leaving it to RNG. A smaller group can take out a larger group if well commanded and they listen well. We used to see this more often early in the game but I think we have few left that can command in a manner needed when going up against 20+ players.

It takes a coordinated group. Players using the skills and ultimates when they are told to use and when it come to ultimates they use it when they are told to use it. For someone to command well enough they have to be able to read the situation well and have a group and listens and executes well. That is not a group formed from zone chat.

The irony of this is the 2 best classes for this; sorcerer and nightblade, are considered the two worst classes in pvp. Negate and teleport bombing doesn't take THAT much coordination. It is very very boring but it isn't that difficult to coordinate. Negate/tele fragging is probably about as exciting as pvding in a 3 raid stack. I think most people who do alliance war want to get something out of what they are doing. The best battles are usually 40 minute sieges at an outpost that goes back and forth because it becomes a problem that needs to be solved and each side is trying to break the other like in a tennis set.

DivineFirstYOLO

Nutshotz wrote: »

Idk why people have issues with drac over AoTP.

Drac
-extremely well organized guild that has been playing together for a long time
- very well coordinated
- they adapt to each other's play style
- they run to benefit the group not themselves. That's skills and set wise


AoTP
- ran by ego players
- stack 3 plus raids together
- doesn't benefit each other
- refuses to learn game mechanics


Am I bashing AoTP nope. They have knowledge players and actually really decent/friendly players as well.

Will I promote 12-16 man group playstyle yes.

Oh what the hell I'm gonna go drink my bleach now. This is useless

Well, in my opinion there are 2 types of people complaining about 12-16 man organized groups:
a) undercover zerg surfers that cry because they get farmed (which they deserve for zerg surfing)
and
b) solo/small scalers that think organized groups are causing lag (they are probably right but organized groups are the only ones able to kill pug zergs of 30+, so we need them in my opinion).

I've been playing solo or in a 2-3 man squad a lot lately and it disgusts me what cyrodiil has become. So many people stack up and follow the zerg, especially now after the double AP event you will always find 30+ people attacking a keep/outpost. There is almost no chance for smaller groups to perform well (talking about No CP Campaign right now). 30 noobs hunting you for 5 AP and you can't even split them, they either come all at once or nobody at all.

It's about time ZOS starts thinking about how to make people spread a little bit. Epic large scale battles/sieges are nice, but getting chased by 30 people at a ressource is not.

For most people ball groups are evil and yeah, there are a lot of noob ball groups that hunt solo players, but Dracarys is not one of them. They are the Heroes Cyrodiil deserves and the ones that it needs right now.


#f***factionstackingzergs
#morepowertoorganziedgroupplay (whether it is 2 man, 6 man, 8 man or 12-16 man)

NBrookus

@Steelshiv

Honest answers to how to do deal with 3 raids stacking together and deliberately and knowingly causing other players' games to stop responding and thinking it's funny as hell:

1) Attempt to form your own competing massive zerg and watch the servers burn.
2) Join a coordinated ballgroup and farm them relentlessly. If AD Dracarys isn't recruiting they might offer tips.
3) Be on the other side of the map. You'll still lag and teleport around but you probably won't disconnect. When this group is running, EP always loses everything anyway since it's easy to just go take other things while they all huddle together in a stack at Arrius with a scroll.
4) Go play another campaign. Sotha has been 3 bars across lately in prime time.
5) Log out and play another game, walk the dog, snuggle with your SO or read a book.

These are basically your options. They aren't the first giant blob to run around Cyro and won't be the last. All of these groups eventually get tired of pvdooring, and this one will, too.

technohic

I will say kudos to Drac for having an AD group. AD could have used them last night when I am assuming the screenshot in the OP was taken. AOTP was 8n full force and as DC , I was even disgusted to see DC go take an AD trikeep while EP took the other 2 for ADs last scroll with the entire server lagging.

Sotha_Sil

Siege can help in the particular situation of the screenshot.

Steelshiv

Gilvoth wrote: »

what i am pointing out, is the fact that those 2 yellow faction characters are all alone against a big group of red players.
and obviously they are going to die, why? because is a whole lot of Red players against just those 2 yellow players

Idk what the other yellow faction player is doing but I was originally standing on the stair railing on first floor landing casting time stop/execute/la on the breach. Time stops to slow for siege on the first floor pointed at the breach, executes to further weaken/kill any enemy player that got hit with siege, and light attacks to build ulti for possible meteor or if my skills weren't working. Some ad players might not like that I use execute so often but with so many purges/vigors I have to reapply it constantly.

I took the picture after my game froze up. This happens frequently and usually I run around and check out people's toons/armor, but wanted to get a few pics instead of positioning so I could think of a counter and what my faction can work on when this happens again.

Also, I didn't die in this battle. Nothing killed me. I disconnected at an important time in the fight and when I logged back in after 10 minutes of retrying I was at the starting gate. If I had to guess what WOULD have killed me i'd have to say permafrost, underground assault, and steel tornado. They are usually what do it when I'm not 1vx'ing.

Gilvoth wrote: »

yet what happens here on this forum every single day, is that normaly on a daily basis, 1 of those 2 yellow players is going to come to this forum and make a thread asking that what ever skill or weapon or or snipe or earthgore armor or sneak invisibility, or heavy armor, or wings, or healing, or light armnor, or sloads, or medium armor passive, or warewolf damage, or assylum weapon, or Master weapon, or ANYTHING whatsoever that was the final blow that killed them in the above picture situation above, was and is OBVIOUSLY "to them" is Overpowered and MUST BE NERFED!

Do I want any of the abilities/skills/weapons nerfed? Hell no. Because I use the same abilities/skills/weapons and I can respect the amount of time and effort people put into their builds/rotations (I usually pm the person that killed me with praise if their rotation was on point) and i spend a good amount of time on mine as well. In addition, the skills aren't what's overpowered, the players are and not in a bad way. I love PvP, and good fights are what helps me grow in skill. Moreso after I'm beaten in combat.

Gilvoth wrote: »

i mean they HAVE to be able to survive an entire LARGE GROUP like that or the game is COMPLETELY imbalanced and the entire staff of eso and all of the rest of us are just garbage players because we cant see and agree with them that what ever killed them in that situation above is ovepowered

I didn't expect to survive that alone. There were some AD on siege and a good amount on second floor. I can probably also safely assume that a handful disconnected like I did. I technically survived the outpost defence due to disconnects and the force port to Elswyr gate.

Gilvoth wrote: »

I hope one day that all of this forum members and all of eso members and all the staff and developers of the entire elderscrolls online community will see this trend and realize how it has caused massive nerfs and destroyed build after build and class after class just because 1 or a few people come to this forum and make threads continuously about things that killed them that MUST BE NERFED and that this has been going on now for YEARS.

The shields on my MagSorc and I agree. But hey, adapt or stop playing. Which is what the focus of this discussion is. How to adapt to the pictured strategy and counter it in a meaningful way.