Feedback for ZOS on Healing Outside of Group and No Vicious Death - What are your thoughts?

forzajuve212

Wanted to restart the discussion on healing outside of group with no Vicious Death now that it has been on the server for two weeks of the test + this week being live with the new CP and armor changes. What has your experience been so far with healing outside of group and large scale grouping? Have you noticed increased or decreased zerging? How has defeating larger numbers been without VD?

Feel free to comment below what you would like to see going forward. Hope this feedback is helpful for the developers in continuing to track and monitor Cyrodiil! @ZOS_GinaBruno @ZOS_BrianWheeler .

Claire

Other

I vastly prefer "healing outside of group" to the alternative. Grouped or not, players tend to focus down low health opponents even when not directed to by a specific leader's callout. From a fairness perspective, I think damage and heals should have complementary/similar mechanics.

I wouldn't mind having VD (and some of the other currently disabled sets) returned to gameplay. Enhanced build diversity would be preferable to the current state.

If healing outside of group is removed, VD damage outside of the victim's group should probably be removed as well. Why should I be penalized for a low-health teammate outside of my group if I can't throw emergency heals to them?

Araneae6537

I like healing outside of group with no vicious death and think ZOS should keep it as it currently stands.

Odd that these are paired together... 🤔

I definitely prefer my heals to work as described — on ALLIES, not just groupies. If additional morphs were added — some group-only, some allies, some self only — that would be fine. For several healing abilities there are already self-only and allies options.

I don’t think HOT stacking should be disabled unless DOT stacking also is. No separate rules for healers, please.

As for Vicious Death... hard to say... I primarily dislike it because it is way too much when used by ball groups. I don’t mind its use by solo-bombers since there are counters for that and they keep us from getting complacent.

TipsyDrow

Other

Healing in group only and vicious death back only if it works when not grouped. Ball groups get a far larger advantage from VD then a solo bomber.

xDeusEJRx

I do not like healing outside of group and think ZOS should revert the change for the health of the game, but I prefer having no vicious death on the server.

Healing outside of groups is just too overpowered and annoying. It allows for multiple zergs to stack heals on another, which is really overpowered when you're dealing with the groups carrying 3 healers each. Also I'm not trying to share my heals with rando's who can't even not stand in oil. There's no option to make your heals target yourself over others, so it's annoying when I go to pop some of my heals and a random happens to run by me and steal my heals off me.

I also don't advocate for VD either because it's a strong set on its own made even stronger when run en masse by basically a mini zerg. If it was solo VD players then whatever, but people just run large groups all running vd which is basically zerging with a powerful near-one shot set.

vesselwiththepestle

I like healing outside of group with no vicious death and think ZOS should keep it as it currently stands.

Vicious Death is not a counter against ball groups. Ball groups play Vicious Death. A lot. If you allow for VD in a meta with every other proc set disabled, ball groups would rule over Cyrodiil. I'd like to think there could be a counter against big zergs which does not empower ball groups.

Healing outside of groups is very important. However, I think some skills should be toned down. Vigor was nerfed, it can only stack 3 times. Why isn't done the same for regeneration? If you get regeneration while you already have 3 stacks of it, the new one could overwrite the oldest one. Tone it down a bit. Don't force players to group.

Jaraal

I like healing outside of group but think vicious death is needed to break up the zergs, reduce lag, and allow for a counterplay to stacking.

Reasons to like out of group healing:


1) The selfless reason:

All this solo guy next to me on the ram wanted to do was help out his alliance. I wish my group could have healed him.... his death was unnecessary.


2) The selfish reason:

All this solo guy next to me on the ram wanted to do was help out his alliance. It's a shame we couldn't heal him, so he became the fuse for the bomb that took us all out.

VaranisArano

I actually like Vicious Death because it takes a good deal of skill to get your bomber into position to use it effectively. As it's most often used, it's a great high risk/high reward set.

That being said, it doesn't discriminate between groups. So if the guy repairing the door next to me gets ambushed by a bomber, I'd better be able to heal him or else I'm going to take damage if he dies.

JayKwellen

I like healing outside of group but think vicious death is needed to break up the zergs, reduce lag, and allow for a counterplay to stacking.

Other people have pointed out that not being able to heal allies standing next to you while still being able to get VD'd by them is kinda lame.

For purely selfish reasons I liked the "no healing outside groups" thing, and still do. When fighting outnumbered against a big group of randoms its noticeably easier to take them down when they're not able to heal each other.

Even still I don't think it should be like that, and cross healing should stay active. Just seems to promote a weirdly antisocial type of behavior in a massively multi-player game in which the objectives allegedly require team play to first say that everyone needs to work together, but then turn right around and require everyone to silo themselves off into smaller and smaller groups. Other selfish reason, having a good fight in a tower just to get VDd by a random lvl 120 who wandered into the fight only to instantly get blown up is a big rip.

If cross healing stays though, VD should too. Having the smaller groups but allowing cross healing, when paired with the lack of survivability carry-procs, strongly encourages everyone to stack together. The lack of VD now makes this a 100% reward 0% risk activity. Without bombers to thin the heard and make people split up a bit there's really no reason for zergs to do anything but agglutinate together into massive blobs unkillable by anything other than more massive blobs.

kingsirdrmr

I like healing outside of group but think vicious death is needed to break up the zergs, reduce lag, and allow for a counterplay to stacking.

Healing outside of groups never felt like an issue to me. In large fights (that time where they disabled cross healing) not getting healed never felt like the reason I died. It made it harder for me to play outside of a group, certainly. But when I died, it was usually positioning, getting rolled by a group, a failed 1vX, or siege. Every build has a self-heal of some kind, so I figured getting heal spammed or spam shield/healing myself could always save. Didn't really matter which I had to rely on.

As far as VD, I prefer no restrictions on set use. If there's a ball group running around a resource or the inside of a keep, you're going to die if you take them on alone. VD has no impact on that as just one player, or even a group of less coordinated players. A zerg will roll you the same way, though bombers works better against them since they're usually just as uncoordinated. Same goes for other proc sets. A zerg is a zerg. A guild is a guild. And of course groups will use sets like VD, too. Taking it away from them doesn't stop the roll.

AuraNebula

I like healing outside of group but think vicious death is needed to break up the zergs, reduce lag, and allow for a counterplay to stacking.

vesselwiththepestle wrote: »

Vicious Death is not a counter against ball groups. Ball groups play Vicious Death. A lot. If you allow for VD in a meta with every other proc set disabled, ball groups would rule over Cyrodiil. I'd like to think there could be a counter against big zergs which does not empower ball groups.

Healing outside of groups is very important. However, I think some skills should be toned down. Vigor was nerfed, it can only stack 3 times. Why isn't done the same for regeneration? If you get regeneration while you already have 3 stacks of it, the new one could overwrite the oldest one. Tone it down a bit. Don't force players to group.

It's an easy fix. Allow only one or two vicious death sets per group. Meaning more than two players in one group can not stack VD.

IAmIcehouse

Other

You would be surprised how little damage VD tends to do to pug stacks. You mainly run it in groups to kill other groups. It tends to do like 3-7% of our total magdps. It's overall underwhelming, but can be tide-turning when fighting other groups.

vesselwiththepestle

I like healing outside of group with no vicious death and think ZOS should keep it as it currently stands.

I'd like to add, if we get VD, I would want Azureblight as well.

Thraben

Other

I'd prefer a higher proxy damage to VD, so that Bomblades can do their thing again.

Joy_Division

I like healing outside of group with no vicious death and think ZOS should keep it as it currently stands.

Zerging has been the same since April 1, 2014 because the fundamental of the map and AvAvA mechanics have not changed. Exactly what is a player supposed to do in Cyrodiil? Take keeps and Elder Scrolls. That's pretty much it. Since there are only a few places on the map where that can happen and taking those requires other players, people are going to zerg regardless of what happens to healing and the other dozen things ZOS has tried in the past to spread players out.

VD is only effectively used by Magblades who 100% devote their build to bombing (and thus stink in every other combat setting) and the very organized groups that people claim are too strong. A player who wears this set is basically forfeiting their most powerful armor bonus in the vast majority of fights they will find themselves in and the set does not synergize with the vast majority of specs players run.

Soul_Demon

I like healing outside of group with no vicious death and think ZOS should keep it as it currently stands.

Having damage mechanics fly in the face of what you are allowing healing mechanics to do---doesn't make sense. Personally would like to see the proc sets come back with one exclusion, VD. Can not tell you how tired I am of having a streamer have his buddy on your same faction strip off his armor to only run up into a group on a door/siege/transits to provide bombs on players for interest in their streams......

Jaraal

I like healing outside of group but think vicious death is needed to break up the zergs, reduce lag, and allow for a counterplay to stacking.

Soul_Demon wrote: »

Can not tell you how tired I am of having a streamer have his buddy on your same faction strip off his armor to only run up into a group on a door/siege/transits to provide bombs on players for interest in their streams......

Reverse stream sniping..... nice! I'll bet that's not against the TOS....

Firstmep

I think ZOS should create code so that if you are in a group, your heals should not go outside of your group, and if you arent in a group your heals should heal others around you, regardless of Vicious Death being in the game.

I'd be okay if people playing in groups couldn't get outside healing could be interesting to maybe battle faction stacking.
That being said a12 man grp is already large enough to have several dedicated healers, so who knows it may do nothing in the end.

Soul_Demon

I like healing outside of group with no vicious death and think ZOS should keep it as it currently stands.

Jaraal wrote: »

Soul_Demon wrote: »

Can not tell you how tired I am of having a streamer have his buddy on your same faction strip off his armor to only run up into a group on a door/siege/transits to provide bombs on players for interest in their streams......

Reverse stream sniping..... nice! I'll bet that's not against the TOS....

Even worse--many do it from the OUTSIDE of a door while its being repaired to get those on the inside repairing to avoid any possible way to counter or see it coming.

techyeshic

Other

I think ZOS should create code so that if you are in a group, your heals should not go outside of your group, and if you arent in a group your heals should heal others around you,and VD should be the same as the healing. I've seen squishy players come plant by others right before a bomb.