Is it time to deal with HOT stacking or rework anti-ball group sets?

xylena_lazarow

Disallow multiple rapid/radiating regeneration procs to stack and instead have the highest heal available take precedent

doesurmindglow wrote: »

survive indefinitely

This is the entire problem. PvP needs anti-stall mechanics the way PvE bosses have enrage modes.

doesurmindglow

Cuddlypuff wrote: »

Few things to point out here.
1. Solo or duo bombing is the best AP in the game without even breaking a sweat. No ball zerg or small scale group in PCNA GH gets anywhere near our AP/h (not a flex or even a skill related thing, just facts).
2. We don't need to run 4-6 man because it only takes 2 bombers to wipe pugs reliably. 2 bombers can often pull off anywhere between 2 and 4 bombs, for 20-30 kills all within 30-120 seconds. It's probably the most fun you can have in PVP right now. Extra healing, survivability, damage, speed, tower/keep humping etc are just training wheels that many people think they need but will do just fine without. I spent most of last campaign as a Redguard writ alt with missing passives, wrong trait/weight gear and the build was already so OP I didn't even bother to optimize.
3. 4-6 man groups can and have farmed for over 30 minutes on keep top floors simply due to the layout. The problem is the AP gain pretty much flatlines after the initial 5 min and each subsequent kill is worth <100 AP. You'd be lucky to get one upgraded D-tick and that's only if pugs are not bright enough to take RSS or pressure groups off flags.
4. 1-2 man bombing gets all the full value AP from the initial kills and the upgraded interim D-tick. You are also free to die/bloodport and move on to the next bomb, rather than feeling obligated to stay and run around in circles, gain trash AP and having to camp back again and again. This pretty much sums up why we refuse to join any groups or ball zergs.

So your group size seems to keep moving around here depending how much AP/h you want to say you make:

I don't doubt that 2 man necro bombing in the current meta is very good AP. I have run exactly that group for months every night and I do know how large the bombs can be; I also know how much AP we made doing that. It is good, no doubt, and much better than zergs or large groups. But you do have to disengage, die, or to frame it otherwise, "bloodport" to another keep after the first couple bombs because that setup has no real survivability.

4-6 man is significantly less AP but slightly more survivability. I've run this configuration as well pretty extensively. It's also not bad. We've farmed towers and the top floors of keeps for almost as long as a decent ball group and made good AP.

But neither really beat properly comped ball groups though, simply because the fights cannot ever last as long or be as large and the potential for significantly outnumbered d-ticks is much lower. At the best it tends to be about the same, but your KDR is much, much worse and if you're really chasing AP, you're spending a lot more time riding between bombs than you are actually fighting. Which is fine! That can be fun. I've enjoyed it a lot as well. But the word you're looking for is "different" instead of "better."

doesurmindglow

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

This is the entire problem. PvP needs anti-stall mechanics the way PvE bosses have enrage modes.

I agree and have suggested a few; most of the response to that argument was that a couple key nerfs would be all that was required, and magically the problem would go away.

At the time, the favorite nerf everyone was sure would do it is was eliminating purge from the ball group arsenal. Now, for some reason, it's something else. I think it's time to admit the problem is bigger than one or two skills and one or two sets.

I think there should be significant adjustments to the way AP is awarded, for starters. I think also there should be more incentives and tools for finding groups so that the organized groups can face more effective competition. I think there should be more rewards for legitimately solo players too. I even kinda like the ideas that are like "siege hits harder the longer a fight goes on." And I think we should roll back some of the overtuned sets and skills also, at least to the point that not everyone who is not in a highly optimized, highly experienced group is basically a walking landmine for the people who are.

But my main point here is not so much to promote my own better solution so much as it is to warn people that the particularly narrow solution being proposed (ie. "just nerf two abilities") will not work, just as previous solutions like it did not work either.

Cuddlypuff

doesurmindglow wrote: »

Cuddlypuff wrote: »

Few things to point out here.
1. Solo or duo bombing is the best AP in the game without even breaking a sweat. No ball zerg or small scale group in PCNA GH gets anywhere near our AP/h (not a flex or even a skill related thing, just facts).
2. We don't need to run 4-6 man because it only takes 2 bombers to wipe pugs reliably. 2 bombers can often pull off anywhere between 2 and 4 bombs, for 20-30 kills all within 30-120 seconds. It's probably the most fun you can have in PVP right now. Extra healing, survivability, damage, speed, tower/keep humping etc are just training wheels that many people think they need but will do just fine without. I spent most of last campaign as a Redguard writ alt with missing passives, wrong trait/weight gear and the build was already so OP I didn't even bother to optimize.
3. 4-6 man groups can and have farmed for over 30 minutes on keep top floors simply due to the layout. The problem is the AP gain pretty much flatlines after the initial 5 min and each subsequent kill is worth <100 AP. You'd be lucky to get one upgraded D-tick and that's only if pugs are not bright enough to take RSS or pressure groups off flags.
4. 1-2 man bombing gets all the full value AP from the initial kills and the upgraded interim D-tick. You are also free to die/bloodport and move on to the next bomb, rather than feeling obligated to stay and run around in circles, gain trash AP and having to camp back again and again. This pretty much sums up why we refuse to join any groups or ball zergs.

So your group size seems to keep moving around here depending how much AP/h you want to say you make:

I don't doubt that 2 man necro bombing in the current meta is very good AP. I have run exactly that group for months every night and I do know how large the bombs can be; I also know how much AP we made doing that. It is good, no doubt, and much better than zergs or large groups. But you do have to disengage, die, or to frame it otherwise, "bloodport" to another keep after the first couple bombs because that setup has no real survivability.

4-6 man is significantly less AP but slightly more survivability. I've run this configuration as well pretty extensively. It's also not bad. We've farmed towers and the top floors of keeps for almost as long as a decent ball group and made good AP.

But neither really beat properly comped ball groups though, simply because the fights cannot ever last as long or be as large and the potential for significantly outnumbered d-ticks is much lower. At the best it tends to be about the same, but your KDR is much, much worse and if you're really chasing AP, you're spending a lot more time riding between bombs than you are actually fighting. Which is fine! That can be fun. I've enjoyed it a lot as well. But the word you're looking for is "different" instead of "better."

I've crunched the numbers before and a high end ball group gets around 200-300 kills 0 deaths at 80-120K AP per hour. As a bomb duo we average 100 kills 10 deaths and 100-150K AP per hour. Mediocre ball zergs probably make 50K AP/h. There's no way a ball group is getting a 200K D-tick but bombers can do it in a 1 minute window with some luck. I've even hit a 650K tick on my MYM tether bomber before. Ordinarily, you're looking at a lot of 20K ticks and maybe 1-2 50K+ ticks every session simply because you don't need to share the tick.

Our old setup was hardly "comped" either - it was just two trashy writ alts in solo bomber builds waiting for set nerfs that never came. We'll be going all in on buff sets and hybrid crossheal cheese this patch so I'm expecting to see some pretty solid gains.

doesurmindglow

Cuddlypuff wrote: »

I've crunched the numbers before and a high end ball group gets around 200-300 kills 0 deaths at 80-120K AP per hour. As a bomb duo we average 100 kills 10 deaths and 100-150K AP per hour. Mediocre ball zergs probably make 50K AP/h. There's no way a ball group is getting a 200K D-tick but bombers can do it in a 1 minute window with some luck. I've even hit a 650K tick on my MYM tether bomber before. Ordinarily, you're looking at a lot of 20K ticks and maybe 1-2 50K+ ticks every session simply because you don't need to share the tick.

Our old setup was hardly "comped" either - it was just two trashy writ alts in solo bomber builds waiting for set nerfs that never came. We'll be going all in on buff sets and hybrid crossheal cheese this patch so I'm expecting to see some pretty solid gains.

Sure but you're still making the silly and incorrect assumption that everyone plays solely for AP. Or that everyone should.

I'd be willing to say not only do some people have other interests and objectives than that, most people have other interests and objectives than that.

Ball groups are perfectly willing to accept slightly less AP per hour if it means spending more time in an actual fight with challenging (or at least, numerous) opponents. And yes ball groups can and do get very large d-ticks fairly regularly, especially because keeps often tick multiple times while they're there and they're virtually always as outnumbered.

Cuddlypuff

doesurmindglow wrote: »

Cuddlypuff wrote: »

I've crunched the numbers before and a high end ball group gets around 200-300 kills 0 deaths at 80-120K AP per hour. As a bomb duo we average 100 kills 10 deaths and 100-150K AP per hour. Mediocre ball zergs probably make 50K AP/h. There's no way a ball group is getting a 200K D-tick but bombers can do it in a 1 minute window with some luck. I've even hit a 650K tick on my MYM tether bomber before. Ordinarily, you're looking at a lot of 20K ticks and maybe 1-2 50K+ ticks every session simply because you don't need to share the tick.

Our old setup was hardly "comped" either - it was just two trashy writ alts in solo bomber builds waiting for set nerfs that never came. We'll be going all in on buff sets and hybrid crossheal cheese this patch so I'm expecting to see some pretty solid gains.

Sure but you're still making the silly and incorrect assumption that everyone plays solely for AP. Or that everyone should.

I'd be willing to say not only do some people have other interests and objectives than that, most people have other interests and objectives than that.

Ball groups are perfectly willing to accept slightly less AP per hour if it means spending more time in an actual fight with challenging (or at least, numerous) opponents. And yes ball groups can and do get very large d-ticks fairly regularly, especially because keeps often tick multiple times while they're there and they're virtually always as outnumbered.

Ok I can accept that AP isn't everything but by the same logic it's silly and incorrect to assume that most people enjoy and think that ball style pvp is challenging. Simplest experiment that anybody can do to see if they will enjoy ball style is to just surf a decent group and let all your buffs and heals drop except RAT/major expedition. You won't die or even lose hp for 10, 20, 30 minutes or however long the group remains up. Even if a few members mess up, others will make up for the lost dmg/hots/ress etc anyway, so there's no need to feel bad about stealing a few crossheals.

Just because it's optimal on paper doesn't overcome the craving that people have for a sense of real threat or feeling of personal impact/contribution. This is another reason why most players don't ball up, outside of the obvious AP loss that I covered in earlier posts.

BTW to avoid any confusion, my overall point was that high end groups/players can easily split up and achieve more (ie AP and fun/challenging fights) than if they were grouped as 12. With the exception of the lag generated, low/mid tier zerg guilds clumping into 36+ man balls to PvDoor don't really bother or interest me much.

doesurmindglow

Cuddlypuff wrote: »

Ok I can accept that AP isn't everything but by the same logic it's silly and incorrect to assume that most people enjoy and think that ball style pvp is challenging. Simplest experiment that anybody can do to see if they will enjoy ball style is to just surf a decent group and let all your buffs and heals drop except RAT/major expedition. You won't die or even lose hp for 10, 20, 30 minutes or however long the group remains up. Even if a few members mess up, others will make up for the lost dmg/hots/ress etc anyway, so there's no need to feel bad about stealing a few crossheals.

Yeah except this betrays a lack of understanding of the amount of work that went into optimizing to that level and that goes into sustaining it continuously. In this experiment, you're just being carried and thinking it's "easy" as a result. It's no different that endgame PVE; sure like, if you're in a good enough group, it won't look like a challenge or an engaging fight to someone who's intentionally contributing nothing to the outcome. But the players carrying you absolutely are engaged at a very high level and that engagement, which to them is interesting, is the reason you're still alive.

Basically the argument is that this experiment somehow yields the perspective of "I'm being carried so it must be easy for the people carrying me," but that isn't actually the case at all.

doesurmindglow

Cuddlypuff wrote: »

BTW to avoid any confusion, my overall point was that high end groups/players can easily split up and achieve more (ie AP and fun/challenging fights) than if they were grouped as 12. With the exception of the lag generated, low/mid tier zerg guilds clumping into 36+ man balls to PvDoor don't really bother or interest me much.

To this point directly, they often do exactly that. Most ball group players are not exclusively ball group players; some casually join up bigger zerg guilds, some do run solo or in duo bomber groups (myself included), and some do BGs or look for small scale resource farms. Most ball groups house dedicated and organized "small scale" comps that are limited to 2-8 or so people.

This isn't really a perspective they aren't, for the most part, already aware of.

doesurmindglow

Cuddlypuff wrote: »

You won't die or even lose hp for 10, 20, 30 minutes or however long the group remains up. Even if a few members mess up, others will make up for the lost dmg/hots/ress etc anyway, so there's no need to feel bad about stealing a few crossheals.

One thing that is super helpful for me about this particular statement is that it sorta clears up why so many people think that nerfing 1 or 2 abilities is remotely viable a solution; they actually do 100% and without sarcasm literally believe that's all there is to it.

In the real world, it's actually a lot more complicated than that, which is why such a narrowly conceived solution will not work. I keep coming back to purge as an example because it was so highly trumpeted in exactly the same way and yet, despite all the trumpeting, eliminating it from the equation has generally only made ball groups stronger. I even made posts on the PTS forums when the purge "solution" was being tested that warned of this outcome.

Anyway, I'm here again warning that thread ends in the same result, whether its proponents care to realize that or not.

xylena_lazarow

Disallow multiple rapid/radiating regeneration procs to stack and instead have the highest heal available take precedent

doesurmindglow wrote: »

Anyway, I'm here again warning that thread ends in the same result, whether its proponents care to realize that or not.

I don't care how they do it, but fights need to be able to end decisively, and stalling should be punished.

neferpitou73

doesurmindglow wrote: »

These threads are always filled with pugs that don't seem to remotely understand what it is that's causing their difficulty: Which is, unsurprisingly, previous threads exactly like these they have long since forgotten about.

HOT stacking is today's purge: the apparent silver bullet nerf that will finally stop organized, coordinated group play for good.

If or when this nerf happens, I fully expect most of the same people to be right back here complaining that somehow the nerf intended to make disorganized, uncoordinated solo play more viable had the opposite effect.

100% This is exactly what will happen and what has always happened as a result of these threads. And why I've been trying to point out the other buffs we've gotten over the years.

doesurmindglow

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

I don't care how they do it, but fights need to be able to end decisively, and stalling should be punished.

I actually agree with this but suggestions as narrow and myopic as "let's nerf two skills" tend to have the opposite effect.

The biggest problem is that we've been through all of this. so. many. times. VD, DC, PB, and now I guess Occult were all introduced with the intention of reining in organized groups and every single one of them is now a critical part of the ball group arsenal without which it would be harder to sustain long outnumbered fights.

Purge was eliminated from ball group comps by PB; everyone at the time insisted that this one skill was the key to their survivability and the only reason someone like me would oppose it was because we were afraid of losing the advantage it provided. Despite that prediction, the groups adapted with basically no problem. In reality, a change like this increases their advantages in these fights because they can coordinate and optimize around it; it introduces a knowledge gap between players that understand purge is lethal in this meta and those that do not; it limits the survivability of all players but once that limit is fully mitigated by an organized group, this limit makes them stronger instead of weaker because of the impact to other players of the change.

I think nerfing HOT stacking isn't really a bad idea as it'd make gameplay slightly more interesting for healers, but HOT stacking was made meta by the nerf to purge and nerfing HOT stacking will simply introduce something else we'll then need to also nerf. And then that nerf won't work either. I promise.

I think we need to rollback this parade of mistakes and instead look at bigger structural mechanics, the incentives for actually pushing objectives in Cyrodiil (or the penalties for not doing so), and the tools available to players who are interested in forming competitive groups.

DrSlaughtr

Disallow multiple rapid/radiating regeneration procs to stack and instead have the highest heal available take precedent

C'mon. HOT stacking was already a thing before PB. The difference is healers had to also dump purges as part of their rotation, and often that meant running a set that helped with this.

The unintended side effect of PB is that it allowed healers to build tanky and just spam RR and vigor over and over with heavies as needed. They are ridiculously hard to kill because they can ignore healing sets and spec as tanks, so even if you burst them from behind it's hard to eliminate them before you get nuked. And since they are ridiculously hard to kill, the ball group itself is harder to kill.

If you eliminated HOT stacking so the healer can only apply one tick of each HOT per ally, they will be forced to use other healing skills and likely run at least one healing set. This means they have less sustain and less survivability. Thus, the ball group itself is easier to kill because smart players can target the healers.

Everyone saw HOT meta coming the moment purge was taken off the table. I can't see any other way for a ball group to spec their healers. But who knows, maybe some wise guy will figure out the next cheese way to grief all those losers who don't want to treat PVP like a vCR+3 world record raid.

But the problem with what I'm seeing above is that you can't not adjust something that is clearly an issue because there may be some unintended consequence. That's the nature of the game. if we had that mindset, ZOS would never change anything. Also I put forward that PB did make ballgroups weaker. Not because of the damage proc but because they did rely heavily on purge. I'm confidence that if HOT stacking was eliminated, the playing field would be a little more even.

Cuddlypuff

TheEndBringer wrote: »

But who knows, maybe some wise guy will figure out the next cheese way to grief all those losers who don't want to treat PVP like a vCR+3 world record raid.

This will never happen and is probably the biggest part of the problem. There is no mythical entity such as a ball group slayer. The people that can wipe a ball zerg will always prioritize farming pugs themselves. They go where pugs are, or set up their own trap for pugs to get baited into. Why would anyone trade in a 90% success rate pug bomb for a <50% success rate ball zerg bomb? It's simply not easy for a duo to line up 500K-1M dmg in ~1GCD against snow treaders and lag but that is practically what's required to take a bite out of the group.

doesurmindglow

TheEndBringer wrote: »

If you eliminated HOT stacking so the healer can only apply one tick of each HOT per ally, they will be forced to use other healing skills and likely run at least one healing set. This means they have less sustain and less survivability. Thus, the ball group itself is easier to kill because smart players can target the healers.

Everyone saw HOT meta coming the moment purge was taken off the table. I can't see any other way for a ball group to spec their healers.

There's a lot wrong here (healers in ball groups do, in fact, run healing sets for example), but the biggest problem is just because you in particular cannot see it doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

It'll depend highly on how you do it: if you make it so the same abilities don't stack multiple times, they'll easily diversify the abilities being used. If you make it so any HOT cannot stack, they'll invest more in direct heals and develop good uptimes on those.

And if you even made it so you can't heal anyone but yourself, which is a really stupid version of the idea that wouldn't even survive a whole patch if realized, they'll move toward damage shields and group optimization of sustain that makes possible previously inaccessible uptimes on self-heals on everyone including damage dealers.

It's hard to say for sure what the response will be because there's not actually much clarity on how this would be done, but what I do know for sure is it'll ultimately have no effect the same way nerfing purge had no effect.

It's just a solution far too simple and narrow to a problem much more complicated and broad.

TheEndBringer wrote: »

But the problem with what I'm seeing above is that you can't not adjust something that is clearly an issue because there may be some unintended consequence. That's the nature of the game. if we had that mindset, ZOS would never change anything. Also I put forward that PB did make ballgroups weaker. Not because of the damage proc but because they did rely heavily on purge. I'm confidence that if HOT stacking was eliminated, the playing field would be a little more even.

I'm not saying you can't change anything. I think there's a lot of things you can change. I've even put forward changes that I think would work better in previous posts. I just don't think limited, narrow changes targeting one set or one ability or even one class of abilities are effective and because their scope is too narrow, they actually have the opposite effect.

But more than that, I guess I just don't see why this time it will magically work when last time, and the time before that, and the time before that, and also, the time before that, it didn't. Like the idea THIS silver bullet is the right one comes on the heels of a great many silver bullets that had no real effect other than to make PVP more imbalanced for the people we imagine we're trying to help.

It ultimately doesn't really matter to me personally either way. All the groups I run have been buffed by every one of these changes and I know ball groups will easily adapt to a world without HOT stacking no problem just as they adapted to a world without purge no problem. But I don't think it's healthy for the game to keep stacking up successive "you are penalized for having allies" mechanics as a general rule as it systematically and increasingly disadvantages newer or more casual players who otherwise might have a chance to make up what they lack in organization and experience by bringing larger numbers. It creates a toxic environment where you are actively discouraged from cooperating with other people on your team, or from working together to achieve shared objectives.

But that's it for me on this subject, I'm sure my advice will again be ignored just as it was ignored before they eliminated purge, because this change, no matter what anyone says, is the change that will work where all previous changes did not. We refuse to learn from any of those previous mistakes so we are committed to repeating them, and can never be convinced to try something new and potentially more effective instead.

Brrrofski

Disallow multiple rapid/radiating regeneration procs to stack and instead have the highest heal available take precedent

Sets are never the answer.

It literally always empowers ball group to take out a zerg of randies. Which, if they're good enough should be able to, but some of these new sets made it a faceroll.

Stacking healing is 100% the problem. And rapid Regen is the big, big factor here.

I assume they haven't done it because of raids in pve? Maybe they can't tie it to battle spirit.

Whatever the reason, it's way too strong.

divnyi

Disallow multiple rapid/radiating regeneration procs to stack and instead have the highest heal available take precedent

doesurmindglow wrote: »

It ultimately doesn't really matter to me personally either way. All the groups I run have been buffed by every one of these changes and I know ball groups will easily adapt to a world without HOT stacking no problem just as they adapted to a world without purge no problem. But I don't think it's healthy for the game to keep stacking up successive "you are penalized for having allies" mechanics as a general rule as it systematically and increasingly disadvantages newer or more casual players who otherwise might have a chance to make up what they lack in organization and experience by bringing larger numbers. It creates a toxic environment where you are actively discouraged from cooperating with other people on your team, or from working together to achieve shared objectives.

There are literally zero sets that say "you are penalized for having allies". There are sets that say "you are penalized for stacking in 5x5 blob and move as if you were a single entity". And it isn't enough, because blobs just outheal the damage anyway.

Coordinated groups will be always better than uncoordinated. But as long as "ball group" exists as a concept, we should be nerfing AoE heals and HoT stacks.

Theignson

I've read through this whole thread and some good stuff in here.

My proposal is much more radical: eliminate ALL group buffs and cross heals in Zerodil.

Good groups would still have an advantage. Izanerys running a 12 man would still beat any group of pugs because in comms, they can still coordinate, still focus targets, and they still know how to move as a group.

But it would still completely level the playing field. Each person would have to buff themselves and keep themselves alive-- which is what I have to do every time in zerodil since I don't have any groups to join.

Oh yes, also get rid of harmony, DC and PB

Amottica

React wrote: »

Amottica wrote: »

neferpitou73 wrote: »

React wrote: »

neferpitou73 wrote: »

divnyi wrote: »

@neferpitou73 you are talking about organizing, roles etc, but why do you dodging the main point of this thread - organized group has Vigor + Radiant Regeneration stacks, which doesn't require you to fit any role, you spam it regardless of your role.

Vigor heals 3 times less than resolving vigor. Given 12man group, it means you get 4 resolving vigors running all the time just from ONE skill. FOUR. RESOLVING. VIGORS. And I didn't count radiant regens in. How is this fair?

Because I don't think it's an issue. My group only runs Vigor/RR on our healers and we still stomp zergs. It's the group coordination and division of labor that allows ball groups to survive. If I'm on a DD I don't have to worry about keeping myself alive and can just run into groups relying on my talented healers to keep me alive. Likewise my healers can rely on the DDs to just kill everything so they can focus on keeping things alive.

I'm just saying, you guys have had two ball group leads come into this thread to tell you they don't think the heal stacks are the issue but have provided several other reasons why they think groups are dominating/overtuned. And we spend hours theorycrafting these comps so we know what we're talking about. Perhaps we should tackle these things before we mess with healing, which will affect literally every part of the game?

I don't know why everyone in this thread glazes over the fact that the ball groups are by far, the largest negative impact on performance that exists. Zenimax themselves acknowledged this back at the beginning of their year of performance testing, and said that the reason they have such a negative impact on server performance is because of the spamming of abilities and the constant calculations related to those abilities.

It is so obvious that having 5 RRs and 5 vigors on you should not exist in the game, and even more obvious that removing the ability to do this will be the easiest way to massively reduce the calculations your "coordinated groups" cause. As the ball group players themselves have said "we'll adapt". So what is the issue with removing this function?

And yet when they did test to see if those abilities were the problem they saw no improvement in performance. And mysteriously when they actually fixed their servers there was no lag even at prime time with several ball groups on the server.

Technically Zenimax did see improvement served side when they did those Cyrodiil tests, though they did not get into specifics about which tests showed improvement.

The main takeaway Zenimax provided is that none of the testing showed any meaningful improvements. So you are correct to note that the testing debunked the theory that stacking of hots does not create that much stress on the server compared to anything else based on actual testing and data received by Zenimax looking into this.

This is untrue. Zenimax cited ball groups as the number one contributor to the heavy calculations that strained the servers, and following the tests they did confirm that they saw a noticeable reduction in strain on the servers during their tests specifically targeting these groups.

What you're glossing over is that the tests were done on the old server hardware, which we now know was the most major part of the issue. Since PC NA has had its hardware replaced, we have seen what I would call a near 80-90% recovery in server performance in cyrodiil - the only time the game lags or becomes "unplayable" is when there are several ball groups present and spamming heals.

The tests did prove that ball groups severely strain the servers, and the PC NA hardware replacement has shown us that ball groups might be the only remaining thing holding us back from "around the clock" near perfect performance in cyrodiil.

@React

I respect you have an opinion about "ball groups". However, my comment was not professing my opinion but merely recanted what Zenimax stated concerning the test results. I am providing a quote from Gina which demonstrates without question that my statement you quoted is 100% factually correct and in context. A number of the tests were designed to diminish the effectiveness of groups using AoEs making it relative to your opinion on "ball groups" but not important to what I stated.

In reviewing the data for all the different tests, we did see some marked improvements in performance – on average, there was approximately a 25% reduction in the magnitude of server frame spikes and a slight reduction in the frequency of those spikes. While these improvements look good on a spreadsheet, they do not have a significant enough impact on improving the overall player experience. As a result, we will not be making any major changes at this time.

I made bold the sentence where she clearly states that none of these had a significant enough impact on improving the overall player experience.

Further, the new server hardware improvement brings a relative improvement to everything. It does not pick and choose. So it is inaccurate to suggest I am glossing over anything. I do not find in her comment concerning the test results stated that the tests proved ball groups severely strain the servers. Please provide the

Respectfully,
Amo

Dem_kitkats1

Disallow multiple rapid/radiating regeneration procs to stack and instead have the highest heal available take precedent

Wolfpaw wrote: »

doesurmindglow wrote: »

These threads are always filled with pugs that don't seem to remotely understand what it is that's causing their difficulty: Which is, unsurprisingly, previous threads exactly like these they have long since forgotten about.

HOT stacking is today's purge: the apparent silver bullet nerf that will finally stop organized, coordinated group play for good.

If or when this nerf happens, I fully expect most of the same people to be right back here complaining that somehow the nerf intended to make disorganized, uncoordinated solo play more viable had the opposite effect.

100% This is exactly what will happen and what has always happened as a result of these threads. And why I've been trying to point out the other buffs we've gotten over the years.

No one is saying that nerfing HOTs will be the one thing to end all organized group play, and players still understand that organized groups will still have the advantage, even if HOTs are addressed. Players are simply calling for a limit on stacking, and not getting rid of HOTs altogether. Therefore, unorganized players will still be able to get hit by a random RR or Vigor as much as now. Limiting HOT stacking will not harm unorganized players anymore than they are hurting now, because they're not relying on as much passive healing from others as you think they are. That's because unorganized players don't move the same way that coordinated groups do in that they cannot coordinate moving in sync with eachother, and stacking near one another is a death sentence around coordinated groups. Therefore, the access to continual passive healing is much lower for unorganized players than that of coordinated groups who can rotate through HOTs continuously and indefinitely due to their proximity to one another. Organized groups don't need that much passive healing on top of the numerous sources of mitigation and buffs that other's have already pointed out. One less thing that benefits organized groups substantially more than others is a good thing.

neferpitou73

Dem_kitkats1 wrote: »

Wolfpaw wrote: »

doesurmindglow wrote: »

These threads are always filled with pugs that don't seem to remotely understand what it is that's causing their difficulty: Which is, unsurprisingly, previous threads exactly like these they have long since forgotten about.

HOT stacking is today's purge: the apparent silver bullet nerf that will finally stop organized, coordinated group play for good.

If or when this nerf happens, I fully expect most of the same people to be right back here complaining that somehow the nerf intended to make disorganized, uncoordinated solo play more viable had the opposite effect.

100% This is exactly what will happen and what has always happened as a result of these threads. And why I've been trying to point out the other buffs we've gotten over the years.

No one is saying that nerfing HOTs will be the one thing to end all organized group play, and players still understand that organized groups will still have the advantage, even if HOTs are addressed. Players are simply calling for a limit on stacking, and not getting rid of HOTs altogether. Therefore, unorganized players will still be able to get hit by a random RR or Vigor as much as now. Limiting HOT stacking will not harm unorganized players anymore than they are hurting now, because they're not relying on as much passive healing from others as you think they are. That's because unorganized players don't move the same way that coordinated groups do in that they cannot coordinate moving in sync with eachother, and stacking near one another is a death sentence around coordinated groups. Therefore, the access to continual passive healing is much lower for unorganized players than that of coordinated groups who can rotate through HOTs continuously and indefinitely due to their proximity to one another. Organized groups don't need that much passive healing on top of the numerous sources of mitigation and buffs that other's have already pointed out. One less thing that benefits organized groups substantially more than others is a good thing.

This thread mimics the many, many threads of the past on ball groups. In which one thing was highlighted as the thing that would finally give PUGs a shot against ball groups (if HOT stacking is not the only important thing then why is there not threads on other suggestions that would fix Cyrodiil). Since I've been here there have been three or four iterations of the same pattern:

Forums: "Fix AOE spam (including RR and Vigor) to fix performance and nerf ball groups!"

ZOS: *Does tests showing the above has no effect*

Forums: "Fix Proc sets and ball groups will die!"

This one I'll admit was more interesting, in the iteration of the no-proc tests balls still did indeed dominate. In the current one not so much but I'm pretty sure that's mostly because no ball group enjoys playing in no-proc.

Forums: "Prevent ball groups from purge spamming so we can finally kill them!"

ZOS: *Implements set that prevents ball groups from purging--which ball groups subsequently work around and use to farm PUGS*

Now we have:

Forums: "Get rid of heal stacking so we can finally kill ball groups!" (and pardon me but this seems like we've gone right back to the top with AOE spam)

So I think you can forgive myself and others who are extremely skeptical that this demanded change will turn out in any way different from the last few, which, I may add, caused a ton of upheaval in the PvP community and likely killed several prominent guilds. Simple pattern recognition would indicate otherwise.

And if you don't believe me on any of this I invite you to go searching through the threads of the PvP sections of the forums to see these arguments repeated ad nauseum likely back to the beginning of the game.

Emmagoldman

FeedbackOnly wrote: »

Please don't mess up the skill in pve whatever happens.

Sadly with the continual powercreep in pve, most "skill" has already been taken out of it

doesurmindglow

divnyi wrote: »

There are literally zero sets that say "you are penalized for having allies". There are sets that say "you are penalized for stacking in 5x5 blob and move as if you were a single entity". And it isn't enough, because blobs just outheal the damage anyway.

Except you're not. You're penalized for NOT doing that, which is exactly as I predicted in my earlier thread.

divnyi wrote: »

Coordinated groups will be always better than uncoordinated. But as long as "ball group" exists as a concept, we should be nerfing AoE heals and HoT stacks.

I mean go for it, the result be the same as I predicted in that thread. And no one listened to me that time either, so here we are.

I don't know why people believe that a pug without a coordinated group, optimized builds based on logs, and 26k HP is going to do better without healing against a group with 35k HP across the board and all the rest of those things, but given that once again no one will listen to reason on the subject, I think it'd be fine to give it a try.

divnyi

Disallow multiple rapid/radiating regeneration procs to stack and instead have the highest heal available take precedent

@doesurmindglow Healing is the most important part of PvP, no matter how hard you try to make it sound unimportant. Your survivability will drop considerably without healing. You've been carried by cross-heals so hard all this time that you forgot the basics.

And idk why do you link me to the thread about those meme sets, they are not core anti-group sets anyway.

Bald_templar

There is no reason to discourage coordinated group play in the purpose of discouraging it. Balance, on the other hand, is a different and more complicated issue.

Do you wish to nerf the damage/healing output of players or make the content easier because of some coordinated group can organize Ads pulls and bosses mechanic perfectly to achieve the tri-fecta in trials while a craglorn pug group can barely pass the first boss?

It is hard to measure how much utility can be gained through a coordinated playstyle vs number stacking casuals. Like someone pointed out, a coordinated group will most likely to adapt any major mechanic change than unorganized individuals. A change to the basic game mechanic will hurt general players more than a group (especially a change without number justifying it).

People also underestimate the effort put into this play style, for example, how much information a group leader has to process in a short window of time and how the group members can make this possible for the leader. As a pvp-player who has been playing in both ball group, small group and solo, I have to point out that a successful ball group is very similar to a well-coordinated small group and requires much more from a player than an average group or an average solo. Most of the new players cant even process the amount of information from their own group while they joined a ball group for a trial.

I understand people's concern of having counter playstyle to every playstyle. The method of counter should be possible but not effortlessly. There are numerous sets added to the game. It is possible to counter a ball group with a smaller group utilizing siege, negate, ccs and anti-stacking sets but not without coordination. To me the game balance is already in a good shape, if counter exists and requires less coordination (but definitely not zero-coordination) than the effective play style.

A few things could be changed in my opinion are the following.
1. Ap tick mechanics
Some sort of change should be introduced so that a group gains much less rewards for staying at the same place for far too long (e.g. hours of farming of the same ppl which is not emp/scroll defending or associated with other cyro objects) without having any actual challenging situation happening. This type of change should aim to encourage a group moving dynamically according to the map or other targets in cyrodiil.
2. Purge encouragement
The introducing of certain sets completely removes purge from a ball group and lead them to the situation of hots stacking the OP mentioned in the first place. (Let me point out that small groups also stacks hot such as the old vigor or alessian etc etc). One could introduce a set which "harvest" all dots on a player (say consume all dots and deal dmg according to the number of different dots) so that group players have to think if they have to purge or they dont want to purge rather than shifting from purge spam to no purge at all.
3.Soft remove Faction lock
Make it possible (for example halving or negating the AP gain, and leaderboard faction lock) for players to switch faction simply for RP (i.e. spying, betraying) purposes. But seriously, many issues of the prime time cyrodiil is that too many ppl and groups are stacking in one faction due to various different reasons which discourages players from other factions. Make it possible for ppl who are willing to challenge themselves to switch for a fight but not possible for ppl who just wish to get rewards to lean towards a single faction.
4.The real issue of heal stacking
The delve is already heading towards a good direction by extending the burst window. If you can deal more damage than your enemy's max health before their hots can tick, then you can kill them. A group playstyle can achieve high burst, high health, high mitigation and high heal, and short burst cd interval at the same time. If they are standing there and face tanking all the damage income from 40 ppl, then there is a balance issue. But if they are utilizing coordinating different methods, for example, los, hots, burst heal, smart blocking (but not permanent blocking apparently ), releasing pressure by killing ppl in smaller stacks, strategically positioning (for example support players avoid damage points and hot spots while making the pugs to focus certain targets they should not) then this is fine.
(So why is this a problem? a smaller group can achieve the same thing but just longer burst cd, so they kite around the tower and make you chase longer. This somehow make ppl think they are "more skillful" than the other play style since you have to do more to survive a longer burst cd.) If you really wish to improve the psychological "skillful" experience, then add more chaotic mechanic to the gameplay. A chain from the oblivion will remove one player in the group randomly after gaining certain amount of AP. At this point, im just making a joke.

React

Disallow multiple rapid/radiating regeneration procs to stack and instead have the highest heal available take precedent

Amottica wrote: »

React wrote: »

Amottica wrote: »

neferpitou73 wrote: »

React wrote: »

neferpitou73 wrote: »

divnyi wrote: »

@neferpitou73 you are talking about organizing, roles etc, but why do you dodging the main point of this thread - organized group has Vigor + Radiant Regeneration stacks, which doesn't require you to fit any role, you spam it regardless of your role.

Vigor heals 3 times less than resolving vigor. Given 12man group, it means you get 4 resolving vigors running all the time just from ONE skill. FOUR. RESOLVING. VIGORS. And I didn't count radiant regens in. How is this fair?

Because I don't think it's an issue. My group only runs Vigor/RR on our healers and we still stomp zergs. It's the group coordination and division of labor that allows ball groups to survive. If I'm on a DD I don't have to worry about keeping myself alive and can just run into groups relying on my talented healers to keep me alive. Likewise my healers can rely on the DDs to just kill everything so they can focus on keeping things alive.

I'm just saying, you guys have had two ball group leads come into this thread to tell you they don't think the heal stacks are the issue but have provided several other reasons why they think groups are dominating/overtuned. And we spend hours theorycrafting these comps so we know what we're talking about. Perhaps we should tackle these things before we mess with healing, which will affect literally every part of the game?

I don't know why everyone in this thread glazes over the fact that the ball groups are by far, the largest negative impact on performance that exists. Zenimax themselves acknowledged this back at the beginning of their year of performance testing, and said that the reason they have such a negative impact on server performance is because of the spamming of abilities and the constant calculations related to those abilities.

It is so obvious that having 5 RRs and 5 vigors on you should not exist in the game, and even more obvious that removing the ability to do this will be the easiest way to massively reduce the calculations your "coordinated groups" cause. As the ball group players themselves have said "we'll adapt". So what is the issue with removing this function?

And yet when they did test to see if those abilities were the problem they saw no improvement in performance. And mysteriously when they actually fixed their servers there was no lag even at prime time with several ball groups on the server.

Technically Zenimax did see improvement served side when they did those Cyrodiil tests, though they did not get into specifics about which tests showed improvement.

The main takeaway Zenimax provided is that none of the testing showed any meaningful improvements. So you are correct to note that the testing debunked the theory that stacking of hots does not create that much stress on the server compared to anything else based on actual testing and data received by Zenimax looking into this.

This is untrue. Zenimax cited ball groups as the number one contributor to the heavy calculations that strained the servers, and following the tests they did confirm that they saw a noticeable reduction in strain on the servers during their tests specifically targeting these groups.

What you're glossing over is that the tests were done on the old server hardware, which we now know was the most major part of the issue. Since PC NA has had its hardware replaced, we have seen what I would call a near 80-90% recovery in server performance in cyrodiil - the only time the game lags or becomes "unplayable" is when there are several ball groups present and spamming heals.

The tests did prove that ball groups severely strain the servers, and the PC NA hardware replacement has shown us that ball groups might be the only remaining thing holding us back from "around the clock" near perfect performance in cyrodiil.

@React

I respect you have an opinion about "ball groups". However, my comment was not professing my opinion but merely recanted what Zenimax stated concerning the test results. I am providing a quote from Gina which demonstrates without question that my statement you quoted is 100% factually correct and in context. A number of the tests were designed to diminish the effectiveness of groups using AoEs making it relative to your opinion on "ball groups" but not important to what I stated.

In reviewing the data for all the different tests, we did see some marked improvements in performance – on average, there was approximately a 25% reduction in the magnitude of server frame spikes and a slight reduction in the frequency of those spikes. While these improvements look good on a spreadsheet, they do not have a significant enough impact on improving the overall player experience. As a result, we will not be making any major changes at this time.

I made bold the sentence where she clearly states that none of these had a significant enough impact on improving the overall player experience.

Further, the new server hardware improvement brings a relative improvement to everything. It does not pick and choose. So it is inaccurate to suggest I am glossing over anything. I do not find in her comment concerning the test results stated that the tests proved ball groups severely strain the servers. Please provide the

Respectfully,
Amo

As you can see in the quote you used here, the tests (which specifically targeted group size, out of group healing, and the frequency you could use AOE heals at) provided a 25% reduction in server frame spikes, which is the zenimax term for instances where the game has skill delay.. This is a massive reduction - but at the time, it did not matter because the core issue then was the server hardware being out of date. A 25% reduction in lag spikes was not enough for them to justify the sweeping changes they were considering. However, this again was on old server hardware. Since we are on new server hardware now and the only time we see skill delay is in the presence of "ball groups", we can ascertain that the core issue is now the "ball group behaviors" which these tests proved have a strong negative affect on performance.

The easiest way to target that behavior is to begin with the nerfing of heal stacking, as it will signifcantly reduce the calculations being caused by these groups.

All of this is of course without even considering the balance side of things, because anyone defending the ability to have 5 RRs and 5 EVs on every single person in a 12 man group clearly does not have a good understanding of balance.

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO

Theignson wrote: »

I've read through this whole thread and some good stuff in here.

My proposal is much more radical: eliminate ALL group buffs and cross heals in Zerodil.

Good groups would still have an advantage. Izanerys running a 12 man would still beat any group of pugs because in comms, they can still coordinate, still focus targets, and they still know how to move as a group.

But it would still completely level the playing field. Each person would have to buff themselves and keep themselves alive-- which is what I have to do every time in zerodil since I don't have any groups to join.

Oh yes, also get rid of harmony, DC and PB

Haven't run like this since last October mainly due to NW & the issue of cyro population size not really supporting 12m outnumbered content as much.
Also lets not forget that it wasn't groups who were against keeping healing restrictions it was 'solo but running with zerg healers'. (i'm fairly sure healers in general would not like a complete removal of cross healing).


@React imo the difference comes from the question, should role diversity still exist in ESO pvp. For me and for a lot of other players it creates a more interesting environment to have roles such as support, healer, pure dd in PVP content.

When I play solo generally I can pick between only 2 roles. Pure DD (Ganking) or Self Sustaining (Solo build). Having a variety of gameplay experiences keeps ESO interesting which is why it's nice to have different roles in group play.

5 RR / Vigor's if you have 5 pure healers in your group imo is not a bad thing, you've made a choice to go with 5 healers instead of 5 dd's and it's their choice to run those skills. The problem comes more so when DD's have basically the same output as a 'healer' with their HoT's.
This is mainly due to Damage being stackable at the same time as HP. If Healing and Damage were stacked via different stats. e.g. Healing on Main stat and Damage on Weapon/Spell dmg. It would be quite interesting as even if 5 dd's had HoT's rolling they wouldn't actually add up to that much if their main stat was low due to health stacking.

xylena_lazarow

Disallow multiple rapid/radiating regeneration procs to stack and instead have the highest heal available take precedent

React wrote: »

All of this is of course without even considering the balance side of things, because anyone defending the ability to have 5 RRs and 5 EVs on every single person in a 12 man group clearly does not have a good understanding of balance.

Oh they get it, but they're not about to give up their unkillable god mode power fantasy, and don't give two guar turds whether pugs and solos get to enjoy Casual Skyrim MMO PvP. "Git gud and play exactly like we do" is perfectly fine with them. The sad part is, there would be a lot more interest in organized group play if it meant decisively winning faction objectives against other tough groups, not just farming pugs running around seeing how long you can tank a bunch of disorganized randoms who are more or less just waiting for you to get as bored as they are.

MEBengalsFan2001

Disallow multiple rapid/radiating regeneration procs to stack and instead have the highest heal available take precedent

Cuddlypuff wrote: »

TheEndBringer wrote: »

But who knows, maybe some wise guy will figure out the next cheese way to grief all those losers who don't want to treat PVP like a vCR+3 world record raid.

This will never happen and is probably the biggest part of the problem. There is no mythical entity such as a ball group slayer. The people that can wipe a ball zerg will always prioritize farming pugs themselves. They go where pugs are, or set up their own trap for pugs to get baited into. Why would anyone trade in a 90% success rate pug bomb for a <50% success rate ball zerg bomb? It's simply not easy for a duo to line up 500K-1M dmg in ~1GCD against snow treaders and lag but that is practically what's required to take a bite out of the group.

In addition to my solution about making roles matter I would significantly reduce the AP gained from killing a player and increase the AP from actually capturing and defending keeps, not resources, not outpost, but keeps and only keeps.

Capturing a keep is around 6K AP and getting a resource is around 1.6K AP. I would raise the the keep defending and capturing values by 50% and lower the rest to 25% of their current value. Making the keeps the best way to earn AP and AP farmers who are boosting will have a harder time getting so much AP from boosting.

Doing the role changes to make roles matter and adjusting the AP would improve PVP IMO.

neferpitou73

MEBengalsFan2001 wrote: »

Cuddlypuff wrote: »

TheEndBringer wrote: »

But who knows, maybe some wise guy will figure out the next cheese way to grief all those losers who don't want to treat PVP like a vCR+3 world record raid.

This will never happen and is probably the biggest part of the problem. There is no mythical entity such as a ball group slayer. The people that can wipe a ball zerg will always prioritize farming pugs themselves. They go where pugs are, or set up their own trap for pugs to get baited into. Why would anyone trade in a 90% success rate pug bomb for a <50% success rate ball zerg bomb? It's simply not easy for a duo to line up 500K-1M dmg in ~1GCD against snow treaders and lag but that is practically what's required to take a bite out of the group.

In addition to my solution about making roles matter I would significantly reduce the AP gained from killing a player and increase the AP from actually capturing and defending keeps, not resources, not outpost, but keeps and only keeps.

Capturing a keep is around 6K AP and getting a resource is around 1.6K AP. I would raise the the keep defending and capturing values by 50% and lower the rest to 25% of their current value. Making the keeps the best way to earn AP and AP farmers who are boosting will have a harder time getting so much AP from boosting.

Doing the role changes to make roles matter and adjusting the AP would improve PVP IMO.

Balls don't kill people for AP (at least not entirely) they do it mostly for the fight.