Please add conditions to volendrung

Danse_Mayhem

The idea ;

Volendrung is a cool artefact which can be used to quickly turn the tide in cyrodil and give the losing side a chance or at least quickly mix up the state of the map, adding some welcome chaos to the regular way of things.

The problem;

Volendrung almost always ends up in the hands of the majority faction, whish results in the following issues ;
- Its spawn points are seemingly random. One faction could have all keeps, scrolls and emperorship and still get the hammer behind their spawn. What is the logic behind this?
- Sure people will say "This one time I saw a small group turn the tide with it" But really, how often does that even happen? Almost always the zerg will just eventually get their hands on it and use it to mop up the rest of the map in record time.
- The map markers. How can the underdog faction use the hammer to their advantage when theres a big "look at me" symbol on the map? The majority faction emperor doesnt have a map marker, which gives total tactical advantage to the majority faction where they can completely prepare for an attack and overpower the hammer with emperor and numbers.
- The emperor restriction. Really what is even the point of this when the guy next to the emperor in their group can pick up the hammer? This restriction achieves nothing.
- The timer. When a zerg faction eventually gets their hands on it, they will roll through keeps like a hot knife through butter, and any players in the way will be zerged down, which adds to the hammer timer as long as they are in the group as the ones getting the kills, or nearby / landing a hit. Whereas the underdog faction who this was designed to help, will generally get less kills with it because hey dont have the numbers. This results in much longer hammer times (lol) for the majority faction, enabling them to sweep through 8+ keeps as long as there are defenders to zerg down.
- The counter? Honestly as time goes on I mostly see underdog factions hiding the hammer behind their spawn gate so that the emperor / majority faction doesnt get their hands on it. At best they will take 1-2 keeps before the emperor zerg shows up and takes it for themselves, who then go on to undo hours of hard work within minutes. With the way that existing pvp score bonuses work, such as scrolls, keep bonuses and emperorship, the odds are already tacked against the underdog or those trying to push back from a gated map. Volendrung honestly just makes that so much worse in 90% of situations. The other counter is to just avoid keeps that are under attack by volendrung so it cant be fed by kills and just hope that it times out before you lose too much.

The solution ; (some ideas, and others welcome)

- Quite simply restrict the emperor faction from picking it up. If a faction has the "emperor" buff for extra max HP, they are unable to pick up the hammer. Since the dude standing next to the emperor can just pick up the hammer which the emp is restricted from, this would very very easily stop the emp + hammer group from rolling the whole map.
- I have seen on another post an idea about only being able to pick it up if you have less than X amount of keeps, and it dropping once you have reached a certain number of objectives?
- Maybe some kind of heal debuff for the carrier, so that its more of a siege weapon and not unstoppable in zergs?
- Maybe prevent the winning faction on score from holding it? I personally think the emperor faction restriction would work better.
- Maybe remove the map marker altogether? Why should the 'underdog' weapon get a giant map marker to allow the zerg to prepare for it, when the much more powerful emperor goes unnoticed on the map and can be anywhere? Obviously this would only work in tandem with the restriction on emperor faction but it could add to that chaos theme of the hammer surprise attacks whilst retaining a fair level of balance.

Other ideas are more than welcome. I just feel that a lot of people are getting sick of this weapon undoing hours of work in minutes when the zerg eventually gets it and uses it to kill off the map 10x faster than they could before. Surely you see a problem when many experienced and perceptive players know that the best course of action is to hide the hammer at the rock gate to prevent the majority getting it, or totally avoid even trying to defend keeps that are under attack by the hammer so that it times out faster, and just focus damage control when its over.

Interested in seeing other thoughts on this - Not one off stories where it helped balance the map, just objectively what it does to pvp.

Cheers : )