A Proposal for Cross-healing and Ball Groups

Hayblinkin

The title says it, I have some ideas about how to fairly resolve the cross-healing issues and balance PvP so that it’s enjoyable for everyone. I’ve been thinking about this a lot because ball groups are ruining open world PvP for everyone I know except ball group players. They log on and control the map for the entire time they are on, often tying up players for long periods of time at one keep or resource to “farm” AP. They are abusing a system the is currently rigged in their favor and I believe the only way to resolve the issue and make PvP fun for everyone, no matter how they play, is to make some changes.

Let me start and say that there are things that I don’t think are imbalanced with respect to ball groups:

Ultimate dumping requires coordination and good leadership. There is nothing wrong with players optimizing the way they deal damage on the battlefield. Ultimate dumping has counter play in that you can negate it, dodge it, run away from it, or heal through it. If you get caught in an ultimate dump it is probably the consequence of being poorly positioned.

Attacking and holding back line keeps and resources is a valid strategy and once again there is counter play to this as well. The faction being attacked can split and attack multiple targets at once or go hit the other factions back line in response.

Taking and holding scrolls is also a valid strategy and allowed within the ruleset. It creates large fights and is fun to a degree to chase across the map and fight in areas you may not have been to before. If ball groups were able to do this with the changes I am proposing, then they would deserve a real pat on the back for their coordination and top tier skills.

However, the problem with ball groups is that they are almost invincible due to their cross-healing ability. Being able to stack multiple instances of Rapid Regeneration and Echoing Vigor results in nearly unkillable players. The benefits of these healing over time effects last long enough that even if a ball group player gets pulled out of their group or falls behind, they still have a cushion of time to get back to the mothership and re-up on their god-like health regeneration.

Unlike the other things that ball groups do, cross-healing has no counter play. Negates are stationary and won’t keep the ball from reapplying all heals a second later when they walk out of it. Borrowed Time (Time Stop morph) doesn’t negate enough healing to have an effect. Sets introduced to stop balls from stacking all the time like Dark Convergence and Plaguebreak don’t do enough to overcome the insane amount of healing. The only way ball groups die is when they are stacked on by an entire faction AND they slip up (they split by accident or get caught on a rock, etc.). The only way to make these coordinated groups fair is to change the way heals stack:

All heal over time abilities and their morphs should function like Major and Minor buffs, only allowing one instance of each to be on a given player at a time.

This would mean a perfectly tuned and coordinated group could maintain one instance of each of the following heal over time abilities per player as applied by allies:

• Illustrious Healing
• Healing Springs
• Rapid Regeneration
• Radiating Regeneration
• Echoing Vigor
• Plus some additional class abilities

All of these abilities if recast on someone already under their effects would have the heal over time’s duration refreshed.

A well-coordinated group could have the same healing potential that they have now, but they would have to sacrifice spots on their ability bars and optimize their build to do it. Spammable burst heals would function the same as they do now (they cost a lot and it would be a large burden to constantly heal a group with them). Burst healing as opposed to passive heal over time healing would force player engagement beyond hitting a couple of buttons and flipping back to the damage bar. Healers would have to actively watch their group’s health and manage their resources for when they are needed the most. It would raise the skill floor higher for healers in group PvP, but I’m sure they can rise to the occasion (speaking from knowing some fine healers).

Furthermore, this change wouldn’t negatively affect regular players that don’t stack healing. Players would still be able to heal each other, just not to the point of making them unkillable. Trial healers would be unaffected beyond both of them having to run different morphs of Regeneration. Dungeon healing would go unaffected as well because there is only one healer in those groups.

So, in conclusion, I just want to say that I wanted to make this thread so that we can have an open and honest debate about what is going on with ball groups. I know that a lot of non-ball players like myself are very upset with the way things are going currently and I would prefer to not lose more friends to other games. Let us all please keep the discussion civil. I’m sure I’ve missed some angles on this proposal and I’d be happy to discuss and clarify any points I’ve made. And remember, this isn’t about eliminating ball groups, it’s about making the combat in PvP fairer and fun for everyone.

If you read through all of this thank you for your time.

xDeusEJRx

People have proposed similar before, but I don't think this will go through mainly because of PVE players.

If healing becomes a 1 buff thing pve players will complain because they usually run 2 healers in trials and would only receive benefit from 1 healer.

Make it 2 instances of the same heal so that it doesn't effect pve and then it's good

Tevalicious

Ball group healer here. I like that you actually brought tangible changes to the discussion, but it would not stop us. All we would have to do is put more stock into burst healing and damage shields (not difficult changes to make). There will always be a way for ball groups to survive that people will want to nerf. This is probably the most well thought out proposal I have seen to nerfing hot stacking, so props for thinking this hard into it. In my opinion the only way pugs have a chance against ball groups that really don't want to die is to have someone teach them how to counter ball groups. Running at a bull with a bunch of plastic forks will never work if that makes any sense. It will take some degree of coordination to take down the high degree of coordination and teamwork there is in a 12 person ball group.

Cuddlypuff

Heal stacking is a myth because 2 DD alone can outdamage 12 man HOTS. I do believe crosshealing is a significant factor in server lag though which makes it difficult for the 2 DD to cast a clean combo, but that's another topic altogether.

The reason why ball zergs survive is by using snow treaders + major expedition on transition where they are most vulnerable. Even if they get caught out by a bomb here, they crutch on multiple Earthgore procs along the transition path to passively purge/heal. The other glaring issue is anyone that is skilled enough to counter ball zergs enjoy farming pugs elsewhere, rather than chasing the ball zerg around for 15 minutes on upper keep floors trying to not get VDed by 18k hp teammates.

ShadowProc

Tevalicious wrote: »

Ball group healer here. I like that you actually brought tangible changes to the discussion, but it would not stop us. All we would have to do is put more stock into burst healing and damage shields (not difficult changes to make). There will always be a way for ball groups to survive that people will want to nerf. This is probably the most well thought out proposal I have seen to nerfing hot stacking, so props for thinking this hard into it. In my opinion the only way pugs have a chance against ball groups that really don't want to die is to have someone teach them how to counter ball groups. Running at a bull with a bunch of plastic forks will never work if that makes any sense. It will take some degree of coordination to take down the high degree of coordination and teamwork there is in a 12 person ball group.

The ego of ball groups. First off there is not a lot of coordination. I played in them for the first 5 years. And I can say some of those groups would mop the floor with most if not all there are now. That took skill back then. There was no carry sets like DC stacking all the pugs nicely, snow treaders, VD, prox det, etc. Those have made ball groups extremely easy and boring.
It is one person calling direction and counting down prox and mini prox. It’s a joke now.
I acknowledge I am being a hypocrite as like I stated I played and defended that style on the forums, but I know better now.

Zos, I appreciate the effort in initially attempting to make this game a large scale pvp focused game, but you know as well as most of us that the servers just can’t do it. The upgrades were awesome and whenever there isn’t a ball group farming performance is amazing now. But time to throw in the towel before some change that negatively effects PVE and doesn’t correct the problem.

We know performance got drastically better when groups we’re reduced from 24 to 12. Time to lower it farther. I suggest 8 or 6.

As group players often state it takes “teamwork and coordination”. Fine. Lower group size and they won’t be effected due to their teamwork and coordination. They still will be on comms together.

They don’t need the crutch of cross healing which destroys performance and other broken mechanics in their favor. They literally laugh at tanking performance and 95% of the other players not having fun because they are tanking performance and can still farm AP.

Tevalicious

ShadowProc wrote: »

Tevalicious wrote: »

Ball group healer here. I like that you actually brought tangible changes to the discussion, but it would not stop us. All we would have to do is put more stock into burst healing and damage shields (not difficult changes to make). There will always be a way for ball groups to survive that people will want to nerf. This is probably the most well thought out proposal I have seen to nerfing hot stacking, so props for thinking this hard into it. In my opinion the only way pugs have a chance against ball groups that really don't want to die is to have someone teach them how to counter ball groups. Running at a bull with a bunch of plastic forks will never work if that makes any sense. It will take some degree of coordination to take down the high degree of coordination and teamwork there is in a 12 person ball group.

The ego of ball groups. First off there is not a lot of coordination. I played in them for the first 5 years. And I can say some of those groups would mop the floor with most if not all there are now. That took skill back then. There was no carry sets like DC stacking all the pugs nicely, snow treaders, VD, prox det, etc. Those have made ball groups extremely easy and boring.
It is one person calling direction and counting down prox and mini prox. It’s a joke now.
I acknowledge I am being a hypocrite as like I stated I played and defended that style on the forums, but I know better now.

Zos, I appreciate the effort in initially attempting to make this game a large scale pvp focused game, but you know as well as most of us that the servers just can’t do it. The upgrades were awesome and whenever there isn’t a ball group farming performance is amazing now. But time to throw in the towel before some change that negatively effects PVE and doesn’t correct the problem.

We know performance got drastically better when groups we’re reduced from 24 to 12. Time to lower it farther. I suggest 8 or 6.

As group players often state it takes “teamwork and coordination”. Fine. Lower group size and they won’t be effected due to their teamwork and coordination. They still will be on comms together.

They don’t need the crutch of cross healing which destroys performance and other broken mechanics in their favor. They literally laugh at tanking performance and 95% of the other players not having fun because they are tanking performance and can still farm AP.

The performance was at its worst when groups were capped at 12 (before server updates). When servers were updates performance got 100x better regardless of there being ball groups or not. Ball grouping just within the past year is drastically different with each patch. It still takes a ton of coordination because of the sets that you describes being used against us. It goes both ways. The only way the group I am in can do well against 40-60 people (or against another guild in a GvG) is if we are all on point the whole fight. If anyone missteps they die. One person calls but everyone communicates and has to work together or else we fail. If you think that it is easy I invite you to join one of our raids and see how you do.

Cuddlypuff

Tev's group is probably one of, if not the best, ball groups on PC-NA. Watching a few of their streams has taught me a lot towards both wiping ball groups, as well as playing as a bombing duo. They also deliberately seek out outnumbered fights instead of thirsting down solos, which is what 90% of ball zergs do.

I don't think anybody is seriously complaining about being farmed by highly skilled groups that actively outplay an entire faction's attempts at bombing, negating and meatbagging etc. My personal gripe is when bad groups of bad players crutch on lag, passive evasion and passive healing to survive my perfectly timed burst during their panicked and disorganized transition, when they should and deserve to wipe. If a group is soft stacking their healers, mini dumping and faking transitions, reversing over or breaking out to kill threats etc, then I am perfectly happy to admit they are simply unbeatable.

Didgerion

I honestly don't think that fixing cross healing will fix the zerg groups.

Also don't forget that cross healing also helps the small groups that tries to face the zerg.

If you remove cross healing the players will just learn the basics on how to evade the damage when being targeted and slot some strong self-heals and the zerging will continue.

To truly get rid of zerging we need friendly fire as well. Just like in the real battle if you swing it without looking you are going to hurt your allies. But that's a lot of balancing work and skill redesign.

The easiest option imo is just to make small groups more efficient on the map, for example we could have more towns and some keeps converted into towns as well. That will force zerg groups to split or otherwise they will not keep up by flipping one town at a time.

etchedpixels

xDeusEJRx wrote: »

People have proposed similar before, but I don't think this will go through mainly because of PVE players.

If healing becomes a 1 buff thing pve players will complain because they usually run 2 healers in trials and would only receive benefit from 1 healer.

Make it 2 instances of the same heal so that it doesn't effect pve and then it's good

I don't think it's a big deal for PVE because

1. Almost all PvE healing is massive overhealing already
2. In a trial you've normally got one healer babysitting the squishies and one doing the tank and maybe some mechanics
3. Because of the massive ovehealing in PvE much of the healer job is a buffbot putting down as many buffs as you can sustain

It would break some stuff (Sunspire tombs for example)

ShadowProc

Tevalicious wrote: »

ShadowProc wrote: »

Tevalicious wrote: »

Ball group healer here. I like that you actually brought tangible changes to the discussion, but it would not stop us. All we would have to do is put more stock into burst healing and damage shields (not difficult changes to make). There will always be a way for ball groups to survive that people will want to nerf. This is probably the most well thought out proposal I have seen to nerfing hot stacking, so props for thinking this hard into it. In my opinion the only way pugs have a chance against ball groups that really don't want to die is to have someone teach them how to counter ball groups. Running at a bull with a bunch of plastic forks will never work if that makes any sense. It will take some degree of coordination to take down the high degree of coordination and teamwork there is in a 12 person ball group.

The ego of ball groups. First off there is not a lot of coordination. I played in them for the first 5 years. And I can say some of those groups would mop the floor with most if not all there are now. That took skill back then. There was no carry sets like DC stacking all the pugs nicely, snow treaders, VD, prox det, etc. Those have made ball groups extremely easy and boring.
It is one person calling direction and counting down prox and mini prox. It’s a joke now.
I acknowledge I am being a hypocrite as like I stated I played and defended that style on the forums, but I know better now.

Zos, I appreciate the effort in initially attempting to make this game a large scale pvp focused game, but you know as well as most of us that the servers just can’t do it. The upgrades were awesome and whenever there isn’t a ball group farming performance is amazing now. But time to throw in the towel before some change that negatively effects PVE and doesn’t correct the problem.

We know performance got drastically better when groups we’re reduced from 24 to 12. Time to lower it farther. I suggest 8 or 6.

As group players often state it takes “teamwork and coordination”. Fine. Lower group size and they won’t be effected due to their teamwork and coordination. They still will be on comms together.

They don’t need the crutch of cross healing which destroys performance and other broken mechanics in their favor. They literally laugh at tanking performance and 95% of the other players not having fun because they are tanking performance and can still farm AP.

The performance was at its worst when groups were capped at 12 (before server updates). When servers were updates performance got 100x better regardless of there being ball groups or not. Ball grouping just within the past year is drastically different with each patch. It still takes a ton of coordination because of the sets that you describes being used against us. It goes both ways. The only way the group I am in can do well against 40-60 people (or against another guild in a GvG) is if we are all on point the whole fight. If anyone missteps they die. One person calls but everyone communicates and has to work together or else we fail. If you think that it is easy I invite you to join one of our raids and see how you do.

No thank you. I did it before as I stated for 5 years. I moved on to solo small scale and realized how much I was crunching on the group. There is no way around it. Having to build for healing, defense, utility, and offense is much more difficult than building for one role.

I watch Tyr from time to time. They are one of the top guilds now. I see how they function. There is no advanced coordination. It’s members knowing their roles and performing on their own. This playstyle entirely crutches on snow treaders and cross healing.

It got extremely stale for me once I got out on my own and so how much more challenging it is to play alone or with 4 or less. If there is no enemy group present, which most of the time there is not as they avoid each other to farm pugs, then it is not difficult at all. A 12 man can and should easily destroy 60 pugs running around due to their stacked HoTs.

Holycannoli

Time for an ESO classic server, pre-Morrowind?

But seriously, I like the idea behind the proposal. Something has to be done to curb the out of control healing in PvP, beyond Battle Spirit.

I haven't tested the PTS healing in PvP but possibly the changes to healing ticks could help? Although the DPS nerf could be more than a counterbalance to it, damn.

Hayblinkin

Tevalicious wrote: »

Ball group healer here. I like that you actually brought tangible changes to the discussion, but it would not stop us. All we would have to do is put more stock into burst healing and damage shields (not difficult changes to make). There will always be a way for ball groups to survive that people will want to nerf.

I appreciate your insight, but I don't think that groups have the sustain necessary to use burst and shields as a substitute. It does sound like you would be okay with this proposed change, so that's awesome.

ShadowProc wrote: »

We know performance got drastically better when groups we’re reduced from 24 to 12. Time to lower it farther. I suggest 8 or 6.

I disagree and actually think with this change to heals, group size could go back up to 24. Groups need to be larger so that pug-wrangling guilds can function like they used to and bring new blood into the PvP scene. But this is a separate issue.

Tevalicious wrote: »

If anyone missteps they die.

This is not true. Radiating Regen ticks for 10 seconds which means you have a maximum of 10 seconds to get back into group and get pumped with heals again. By staggering the casting of this skill ball groups can guarantee that players will always have at least 2-3 instances ticking when someone gets pulled out of group or missteps as you put it. 10 seconds is a long time in PvP.

Cuddlypuff wrote: »

I don't think anybody is seriously complaining about being farmed by highly skilled groups that actively outplay an entire faction's attempts at bombing, negating and meatbagging etc. My personal gripe is when bad groups of bad players crutch on lag, passive evasion and passive healing to survive my perfectly timed burst during their panicked and disorganized transition, when they should and deserve to wipe. If a group is soft stacking their healers, mini dumping and faking transitions, reversing over or breaking out to kill threats etc, then I am perfectly happy to admit they are simply unbeatable.

I only take issue here by saying that groups using heal stacking mechanics are "outplay[ing]" anything. I agree, as I said in the original post, that ball grouping does require coordination and leadership. However, nothing they do in combat requires any skill because they use the solid foundation of healing to allow all of their behaviors. If balls were to lose the passive healing I don't believe that they would be able to successfully complete most of the maneuvers they currently do without losing a lot of players.

Didgerion wrote: »

I honestly don't think that fixing cross healing will fix the zerg groups.

Also don't forget that cross healing also helps the small groups that tries to face the zerg.

I run in smaller groups and we normally run one healer for everyone to get some passive healing but everyone takes care of their own burst heals. When we add a second healer into the mix we become very difficult to kill, but nowhere near as difficult as a whole group cross healing with RR. If this change were implemented, it would level the playing field so that no matter what the group's size is, the amount of healing on each player could be overcome by damage. I think ball groups would still exist, they just would need to line of sight more instead of standing in the open, eating incoming damage, and even more importantly they would be killable.

Durham

Tevalicious wrote: »

ShadowProc wrote: »

Tevalicious wrote: »

Ball group healer here. I like that you actually brought tangible changes to the discussion, but it would not stop us. All we would have to do is put more stock into burst healing and damage shields (not difficult changes to make). There will always be a way for ball groups to survive that people will want to nerf. This is probably the most well thought out proposal I have seen to nerfing hot stacking, so props for thinking this hard into it. In my opinion the only way pugs have a chance against ball groups that really don't want to die is to have someone teach them how to counter ball groups. Running at a bull with a bunch of plastic forks will never work if that makes any sense. It will take some degree of coordination to take down the high degree of coordination and teamwork there is in a 12 person ball group.

The ego of ball groups. First off there is not a lot of coordination. I played in them for the first 5 years. And I can say some of those groups would mop the floor with most if not all there are now. That took skill back then. There was no carry sets like DC stacking all the pugs nicely, snow treaders, VD, prox det, etc. Those have made ball groups extremely easy and boring.
It is one person calling direction and counting down prox and mini prox. It’s a joke now.
I acknowledge I am being a hypocrite as like I stated I played and defended that style on the forums, but I know better now.

Zos, I appreciate the effort in initially attempting to make this game a large scale pvp focused game, but you know as well as most of us that the servers just can’t do it. The upgrades were awesome and whenever there isn’t a ball group farming performance is amazing now. But time to throw in the towel before some change that negatively effects PVE and doesn’t correct the problem.

We know performance got drastically better when groups we’re reduced from 24 to 12. Time to lower it farther. I suggest 8 or 6.

As group players often state it takes “teamwork and coordination”. Fine. Lower group size and they won’t be effected due to their teamwork and coordination. They still will be on comms together.

They don’t need the crutch of cross healing which destroys performance and other broken mechanics in their favor. They literally laugh at tanking performance and 95% of the other players not having fun because they are tanking performance and can still farm AP.

The performance was at its worst when groups were capped at 12 (before server updates). When servers were updates performance got 100x better regardless of there being ball groups or not. Ball grouping just within the past year is drastically different with each patch. It still takes a ton of coordination because of the sets that you describes being used against us. It goes both ways. The only way the group I am in can do well against 40-60 people (or against another guild in a GvG) is if we are all on point the whole fight. If anyone missteps they die. One person calls but everyone communicates and has to work together or else we fail. If you think that it is easy I invite you to join one of our raids and see how you do.

You listen to 1 guy lol not really coordinating. You do what you are told and wear what you are told to wear. There is no real assisting on targets because you do not really have to target individuals. Your groups are like weed eaters mowing down grass blades not knowing who you are killing, unless its another ball group.

Ball grouping is most efficient way to ear AP, the most efficient way to get kills by the 100s. The game is actually reinforces this style of play because of the way healing works. I do not blame people for playing this way at all!

However the true end game in after ball grouping this is when you reduce the size your grouping. This takes a ton of coordination each player has to do its part there is no carry! You typically have 1 primary healer, that also has another purpose. In small mans each person has multiple roles in every fight. You see everyone you kill. You generally stay away from ball groups. Unless you have built your small group to bomb them. Some of the best players who did do ball groups have shrunk down into these groups. This is more fun then ball grouping ever was.

Tevalicious

I'm newer to forums so i might have to edit this a few times

Hayblinkin wrote: »

I appreciate your insight, but I don't think that groups have the sustain necessary to use burst and shields as a substitute. It does sound like you would be okay with this proposed change, so that's awesome.

We can have as much or as little shielding or sustain as we choose to have, so it wouldn't be an issue. I wouldn't saw that I'm all for these changes mainly because it would force me to be more specific in what skills people run and that is just annoying but it would not be the end of our guild.

Hayblinkin wrote: »

This is not true. Radiating Regen ticks for 10 seconds which means you have a maximum of 10 seconds to get back into group and get pumped with heals again. By staggering the casting of this skill ball groups can guarantee that players will always have at least 2-3 instances ticking when someone gets pulled out of group or missteps as you put it. 10 seconds is a long time in PvP.

Hots cannot eat through 20 people parsing on someone that got caught out of the group. They are strong but not that strong, so if someone messes up or goes the wrong way and gets caught there is a goo chance they will die. It happens at least once a night if not once a fight in our stream.

Durham wrote: »

You listen to 1 guy lol not really coordinating. You do what you are told and wear what you are told to wear. There is no real assisting on targets because you do not really have to target individuals. Your groups are like weed eaters mowing down grass blades not knowing who you are killing, unless its another ball group.

Ball grouping is most efficient way to ear AP, the most efficient way to get kills by the 100s. The game is actually reinforces this style of play because of the way healing works. I do not blame people for playing this way at all!

However the true end game in after ball grouping this is when you reduce the size your grouping. This takes a ton of coordination each player has to do its part there is no carry! You typically have 1 primary healer, that also has another purpose. In small mans each person has multiple roles in every fight. You see everyone you kill. You generally stay away from ball groups. Unless you have built your small group to bomb them. Some of the best players who did do ball groups have shrunk down into these groups. This is more fun then ball grouping ever was.

In any organized group there is 1 person doing a majority of the calling; it works the same way in high end BG groups. With that said it still takes every group member talking and coordinating with lead to be successful. There is nothing wrong with the leader of a guild leading. I encourage people to play in a way they find fun. I have run 4-6 person groups as well as run in ball groups. Both are fun and take a high degree of communication, build specification, and coordination to pull off. the existence of one does not negate the validity of the other.

Tevalicious

ShadowProc wrote: »

Tevalicious wrote: »

ShadowProc wrote: »

Tevalicious wrote: »

Ball group healer here. I like that you actually brought tangible changes to the discussion, but it would not stop us. All we would have to do is put more stock into burst healing and damage shields (not difficult changes to make). There will always be a way for ball groups to survive that people will want to nerf. This is probably the most well thought out proposal I have seen to nerfing hot stacking, so props for thinking this hard into it. In my opinion the only way pugs have a chance against ball groups that really don't want to die is to have someone teach them how to counter ball groups. Running at a bull with a bunch of plastic forks will never work if that makes any sense. It will take some degree of coordination to take down the high degree of coordination and teamwork there is in a 12 person ball group.

The ego of ball groups. First off there is not a lot of coordination. I played in them for the first 5 years. And I can say some of those groups would mop the floor with most if not all there are now. That took skill back then. There was no carry sets like DC stacking all the pugs nicely, snow treaders, VD, prox det, etc. Those have made ball groups extremely easy and boring.
It is one person calling direction and counting down prox and mini prox. It’s a joke now.
I acknowledge I am being a hypocrite as like I stated I played and defended that style on the forums, but I know better now.

Zos, I appreciate the effort in initially attempting to make this game a large scale pvp focused game, but you know as well as most of us that the servers just can’t do it. The upgrades were awesome and whenever there isn’t a ball group farming performance is amazing now. But time to throw in the towel before some change that negatively effects PVE and doesn’t correct the problem.

We know performance got drastically better when groups we’re reduced from 24 to 12. Time to lower it farther. I suggest 8 or 6.

As group players often state it takes “teamwork and coordination”. Fine. Lower group size and they won’t be effected due to their teamwork and coordination. They still will be on comms together.

They don’t need the crutch of cross healing which destroys performance and other broken mechanics in their favor. They literally laugh at tanking performance and 95% of the other players not having fun because they are tanking performance and can still farm AP.

The performance was at its worst when groups were capped at 12 (before server updates). When servers were updates performance got 100x better regardless of there being ball groups or not. Ball grouping just within the past year is drastically different with each patch. It still takes a ton of coordination because of the sets that you describes being used against us. It goes both ways. The only way the group I am in can do well against 40-60 people (or against another guild in a GvG) is if we are all on point the whole fight. If anyone missteps they die. One person calls but everyone communicates and has to work together or else we fail. If you think that it is easy I invite you to join one of our raids and see how you do.

No thank you. I did it before as I stated for 5 years. I moved on to solo small scale and realized how much I was crunching on the group. There is no way around it. Having to build for healing, defense, utility, and offense is much more difficult than building for one role.

I watch Tyr from time to time. They are one of the top guilds now. I see how they function. There is no advanced coordination. It’s members knowing their roles and performing on their own. This playstyle entirely crutches on snow treaders and cross healing.

It got extremely stale for me once I got out on my own and so how much more challenging it is to play alone or with 4 or less. If there is no enemy group present, which most of the time there is not as they avoid each other to farm pugs, then it is not difficult at all. A 12 man can and should easily destroy 60 pugs running around due to their stacked HoTs.

I am glad you found what is fun for you, I have also found what is really fun for me. Id like to remind you that ball groups successfully ran all through no proc where boots were not a thing. As for the heal stacking, there is nothing stopping 60 pugs from heal stacking to survive against groups. Literally nothing other than the lack of leadership and coordination that ball groups have. If you watch stream then you know that its more than just the lead talking the entire time. We have to communicate our skills, ults, positions, and when we are in trouble or else we fail. Nothing is stopping other groups or pugs from doing this other than leadership and skill.

OnGodiDoDis

Tevalicious wrote: »

Ball group healer here. I like that you actually brought tangible changes to the discussion, but it would not stop us. All we would have to do is put more stock into burst healing and damage shields (not difficult changes to make). There will always be a way for ball groups to survive that people will want to nerf. This is probably the most well thought out proposal I have seen to nerfing hot stacking, so props for thinking this hard into it. In my opinion the only way pugs have a chance against ball groups that really don't want to die is to have someone teach them how to counter ball groups. Running at a bull with a bunch of plastic forks will never work if that makes any sense. It will take some degree of coordination to take down the high degree of coordination and teamwork there is in a 12 person ball group.

Over-healing is the main culprit here, and I can prove it. I was in a situation that required a friendly ball group to blanket an area with seven simultaneous negates to stop their healers from casting (spoiler alert: they died in 3 seconds). This just proves that their group is being carried by heals, and not skill or snow treaders as you claim. If healing wasn't the problem, then the negates would have no effect on the group.

Tevalicious

OnGodiDoDis wrote: »

Tevalicious wrote: »

Ball group healer here. I like that you actually brought tangible changes to the discussion, but it would not stop us. All we would have to do is put more stock into burst healing and damage shields (not difficult changes to make). There will always be a way for ball groups to survive that people will want to nerf. This is probably the most well thought out proposal I have seen to nerfing hot stacking, so props for thinking this hard into it. In my opinion the only way pugs have a chance against ball groups that really don't want to die is to have someone teach them how to counter ball groups. Running at a bull with a bunch of plastic forks will never work if that makes any sense. It will take some degree of coordination to take down the high degree of coordination and teamwork there is in a 12 person ball group.

Over-healing is the main culprit here, and I can prove it. I was in a situation that required a friendly ball group to blanket an area with seven simultaneous negates to stop their healers from casting (spoiler alert: they died in 3 seconds). This just proves that their group is being carried by heals, and not skill or snow treaders as you claim. If healing wasn't the problem, then the negates would have no effect on the group.

If over-healing was as broken as you say, then the ball group would NOT have died when they were stopped form burst healing. You just proved that dropping 7 ults in conjunction with other damage ults and skills is what kills groups.

ShadowProc

Durham wrote: »

Tevalicious wrote: »

ShadowProc wrote: »

Tevalicious wrote: »

Ball group healer here. I like that you actually brought tangible changes to the discussion, but it would not stop us. All we would have to do is put more stock into burst healing and damage shields (not difficult changes to make). There will always be a way for ball groups to survive that people will want to nerf. This is probably the most well thought out proposal I have seen to nerfing hot stacking, so props for thinking this hard into it. In my opinion the only way pugs have a chance against ball groups that really don't want to die is to have someone teach them how to counter ball groups. Running at a bull with a bunch of plastic forks will never work if that makes any sense. It will take some degree of coordination to take down the high degree of coordination and teamwork there is in a 12 person ball group.

The ego of ball groups. First off there is not a lot of coordination. I played in them for the first 5 years. And I can say some of those groups would mop the floor with most if not all there are now. That took skill back then. There was no carry sets like DC stacking all the pugs nicely, snow treaders, VD, prox det, etc. Those have made ball groups extremely easy and boring.
It is one person calling direction and counting down prox and mini prox. It’s a joke now.
I acknowledge I am being a hypocrite as like I stated I played and defended that style on the forums, but I know better now.

Zos, I appreciate the effort in initially attempting to make this game a large scale pvp focused game, but you know as well as most of us that the servers just can’t do it. The upgrades were awesome and whenever there isn’t a ball group farming performance is amazing now. But time to throw in the towel before some change that negatively effects PVE and doesn’t correct the problem.

We know performance got drastically better when groups we’re reduced from 24 to 12. Time to lower it farther. I suggest 8 or 6.

As group players often state it takes “teamwork and coordination”. Fine. Lower group size and they won’t be effected due to their teamwork and coordination. They still will be on comms together.

They don’t need the crutch of cross healing which destroys performance and other broken mechanics in their favor. They literally laugh at tanking performance and 95% of the other players not having fun because they are tanking performance and can still farm AP.

The performance was at its worst when groups were capped at 12 (before server updates). When servers were updates performance got 100x better regardless of there being ball groups or not. Ball grouping just within the past year is drastically different with each patch. It still takes a ton of coordination because of the sets that you describes being used against us. It goes both ways. The only way the group I am in can do well against 40-60 people (or against another guild in a GvG) is if we are all on point the whole fight. If anyone missteps they die. One person calls but everyone communicates and has to work together or else we fail. If you think that it is easy I invite you to join one of our raids and see how you do.

You listen to 1 guy lol not really coordinating. You do what you are told and wear what you are told to wear. There is no real assisting on targets because you do not really have to target individuals. Your groups are like weed eaters mowing down grass blades not knowing who you are killing, unless its another ball group.

Ball grouping is most efficient way to ear AP, the most efficient way to get kills by the 100s. The game is actually reinforces this style of play because of the way healing works. I do not blame people for playing this way at all!

However the true end game in after ball grouping this is when you reduce the size your grouping. This takes a ton of coordination each player has to do its part there is no carry! You typically have 1 primary healer, that also has another purpose. In small mans each person has multiple roles in every fight. You see everyone you kill. You generally stay away from ball groups. Unless you have built your small group to bomb them. Some of the best players who did do ball groups have shrunk down into these groups. This is more fun then ball grouping ever was.

100% agree. The smaller the group all the way to solo the more skill required and subsequent reward.

ShadowProc

Tevalicious wrote: »

ShadowProc wrote: »

Tevalicious wrote: »

ShadowProc wrote: »

Tevalicious wrote: »

Ball group healer here. I like that you actually brought tangible changes to the discussion, but it would not stop us. All we would have to do is put more stock into burst healing and damage shields (not difficult changes to make). There will always be a way for ball groups to survive that people will want to nerf. This is probably the most well thought out proposal I have seen to nerfing hot stacking, so props for thinking this hard into it. In my opinion the only way pugs have a chance against ball groups that really don't want to die is to have someone teach them how to counter ball groups. Running at a bull with a bunch of plastic forks will never work if that makes any sense. It will take some degree of coordination to take down the high degree of coordination and teamwork there is in a 12 person ball group.

The ego of ball groups. First off there is not a lot of coordination. I played in them for the first 5 years. And I can say some of those groups would mop the floor with most if not all there are now. That took skill back then. There was no carry sets like DC stacking all the pugs nicely, snow treaders, VD, prox det, etc. Those have made ball groups extremely easy and boring.
It is one person calling direction and counting down prox and mini prox. It’s a joke now.
I acknowledge I am being a hypocrite as like I stated I played and defended that style on the forums, but I know better now.

Zos, I appreciate the effort in initially attempting to make this game a large scale pvp focused game, but you know as well as most of us that the servers just can’t do it. The upgrades were awesome and whenever there isn’t a ball group farming performance is amazing now. But time to throw in the towel before some change that negatively effects PVE and doesn’t correct the problem.

We know performance got drastically better when groups we’re reduced from 24 to 12. Time to lower it farther. I suggest 8 or 6.

As group players often state it takes “teamwork and coordination”. Fine. Lower group size and they won’t be effected due to their teamwork and coordination. They still will be on comms together.

They don’t need the crutch of cross healing which destroys performance and other broken mechanics in their favor. They literally laugh at tanking performance and 95% of the other players not having fun because they are tanking performance and can still farm AP.

The performance was at its worst when groups were capped at 12 (before server updates). When servers were updates performance got 100x better regardless of there being ball groups or not. Ball grouping just within the past year is drastically different with each patch. It still takes a ton of coordination because of the sets that you describes being used against us. It goes both ways. The only way the group I am in can do well against 40-60 people (or against another guild in a GvG) is if we are all on point the whole fight. If anyone missteps they die. One person calls but everyone communicates and has to work together or else we fail. If you think that it is easy I invite you to join one of our raids and see how you do.

No thank you. I did it before as I stated for 5 years. I moved on to solo small scale and realized how much I was crunching on the group. There is no way around it. Having to build for healing, defense, utility, and offense is much more difficult than building for one role.

I watch Tyr from time to time. They are one of the top guilds now. I see how they function. There is no advanced coordination. It’s members knowing their roles and performing on their own. This playstyle entirely crutches on snow treaders and cross healing.

It got extremely stale for me once I got out on my own and so how much more challenging it is to play alone or with 4 or less. If there is no enemy group present, which most of the time there is not as they avoid each other to farm pugs, then it is not difficult at all. A 12 man can and should easily destroy 60 pugs running around due to their stacked HoTs.

I am glad you found what is fun for you, I have also found what is really fun for me. Id like to remind you that ball groups successfully ran all through no proc where boots were not a thing. As for the heal stacking, there is nothing stopping 60 pugs from heal stacking to survive against groups. Literally nothing other than the lack of leadership and coordination that ball groups have. If you watch stream then you know that its more than just the lead talking the entire time. We have to communicate our skills, ults, positions, and when we are in trouble or else we fail. Nothing is stopping other groups or pugs from doing this other than leadership and skill.

But the big difference is to be able to take down groups without another group is slowing them down and separating them from each other and pick them apart. Snow treaders has made it actually stupid easy now removing main weakness.

And no they were not as successful which led to them all flooding forums with cries they were getting slowed or immobilized too much from things like bombard.

Zos, why did you remove the only way solo players, WHO MAKE UP THE MAJORITY OF THE PVP PLAYER BASE, to actually be effective and have a chance at taking down ball groups??????? They tank performance and drive new players away. Like seriously why destroy the experience for 95% of the player base?????

Tevalicious

ShadowProc wrote: »

Tevalicious wrote: »

ShadowProc wrote: »

Tevalicious wrote: »

ShadowProc wrote: »

Tevalicious wrote: »

Ball group healer here. I like that you actually brought tangible changes to the discussion, but it would not stop us. All we would have to do is put more stock into burst healing and damage shields (not difficult changes to make). There will always be a way for ball groups to survive that people will want to nerf. This is probably the most well thought out proposal I have seen to nerfing hot stacking, so props for thinking this hard into it. In my opinion the only way pugs have a chance against ball groups that really don't want to die is to have someone teach them how to counter ball groups. Running at a bull with a bunch of plastic forks will never work if that makes any sense. It will take some degree of coordination to take down the high degree of coordination and teamwork there is in a 12 person ball group.

The ego of ball groups. First off there is not a lot of coordination. I played in them for the first 5 years. And I can say some of those groups would mop the floor with most if not all there are now. That took skill back then. There was no carry sets like DC stacking all the pugs nicely, snow treaders, VD, prox det, etc. Those have made ball groups extremely easy and boring.
It is one person calling direction and counting down prox and mini prox. It’s a joke now.
I acknowledge I am being a hypocrite as like I stated I played and defended that style on the forums, but I know better now.

Zos, I appreciate the effort in initially attempting to make this game a large scale pvp focused game, but you know as well as most of us that the servers just can’t do it. The upgrades were awesome and whenever there isn’t a ball group farming performance is amazing now. But time to throw in the towel before some change that negatively effects PVE and doesn’t correct the problem.

We know performance got drastically better when groups we’re reduced from 24 to 12. Time to lower it farther. I suggest 8 or 6.

As group players often state it takes “teamwork and coordination”. Fine. Lower group size and they won’t be effected due to their teamwork and coordination. They still will be on comms together.

They don’t need the crutch of cross healing which destroys performance and other broken mechanics in their favor. They literally laugh at tanking performance and 95% of the other players not having fun because they are tanking performance and can still farm AP.

The performance was at its worst when groups were capped at 12 (before server updates). When servers were updates performance got 100x better regardless of there being ball groups or not. Ball grouping just within the past year is drastically different with each patch. It still takes a ton of coordination because of the sets that you describes being used against us. It goes both ways. The only way the group I am in can do well against 40-60 people (or against another guild in a GvG) is if we are all on point the whole fight. If anyone missteps they die. One person calls but everyone communicates and has to work together or else we fail. If you think that it is easy I invite you to join one of our raids and see how you do.

No thank you. I did it before as I stated for 5 years. I moved on to solo small scale and realized how much I was crunching on the group. There is no way around it. Having to build for healing, defense, utility, and offense is much more difficult than building for one role.

I watch Tyr from time to time. They are one of the top guilds now. I see how they function. There is no advanced coordination. It’s members knowing their roles and performing on their own. This playstyle entirely crutches on snow treaders and cross healing.

It got extremely stale for me once I got out on my own and so how much more challenging it is to play alone or with 4 or less. If there is no enemy group present, which most of the time there is not as they avoid each other to farm pugs, then it is not difficult at all. A 12 man can and should easily destroy 60 pugs running around due to their stacked HoTs.

I am glad you found what is fun for you, I have also found what is really fun for me. Id like to remind you that ball groups successfully ran all through no proc where boots were not a thing. As for the heal stacking, there is nothing stopping 60 pugs from heal stacking to survive against groups. Literally nothing other than the lack of leadership and coordination that ball groups have. If you watch stream then you know that its more than just the lead talking the entire time. We have to communicate our skills, ults, positions, and when we are in trouble or else we fail. Nothing is stopping other groups or pugs from doing this other than leadership and skill.

But the big difference is to be able to take down groups without another group is slowing them down and separating them from each other and pick them apart. Snow treaders has made it actually stupid easy now removing main weakness.

And no they were not as successful which led to them all flooding forums with cries they were getting slowed or immobilized too much from things like bombard.

Zos, why did you remove the only way solo players, WHO MAKE UP THE MAJORITY OF THE PVP PLAYER BASE, to actually be effective and have a chance at taking down ball groups??????? They tank performance and drive new players away. Like seriously why destroy the experience for 95% of the player base?????

I played in no-proc and proc. We were just as successful then as we are now relative to the meta at the time. Ball groups have nothing to do with performance, that's all on the server side. We had no real impact before or after the server upgrade. Cyrodiil is not majority solo players. Majority of players are in some sort of group or zerg that could easily employ the same tactic that we do to be better.

Cuddlypuff

The key issue that better players have against ball zergs is passive lag, evasion/mitigation and healing that can thwart even the most comprehensive outplays, without any member actively or reactively counterplaying the bomb. These threads are yet another reminder that the majority of people complaining about ball zergs have no idea how they work or how to wipe them. It's the same thing that happened with the latest set of PVE nerfs which were misinformed by the swathes of casuals complaining about things they do not yet understand. All this does is trick the devs into making more silly changes that don't fix the real issues whatsoever.

Like Tev said, there is still actual coordination and skill used by good ball groups outside of the passive cheese. I usually run in a bomb duo but underneath the surface it utilizes the same offense / movement as a ball group, just without the buffs and heals. By having only 2 members, we also have the freedom to deathport and travel to any new fight without being locked into one place with stale AP like ball groups do. This is how we easily get the highest kill blows/player/hr and AP/hr on PC-NA GH.

ShadowProc

Tevalicious wrote: »

ShadowProc wrote: »

Tevalicious wrote: »

ShadowProc wrote: »

Tevalicious wrote: »

ShadowProc wrote: »

Tevalicious wrote: »

Ball group healer here. I like that you actually brought tangible changes to the discussion, but it would not stop us. All we would have to do is put more stock into burst healing and damage shields (not difficult changes to make). There will always be a way for ball groups to survive that people will want to nerf. This is probably the most well thought out proposal I have seen to nerfing hot stacking, so props for thinking this hard into it. In my opinion the only way pugs have a chance against ball groups that really don't want to die is to have someone teach them how to counter ball groups. Running at a bull with a bunch of plastic forks will never work if that makes any sense. It will take some degree of coordination to take down the high degree of coordination and teamwork there is in a 12 person ball group.

The ego of ball groups. First off there is not a lot of coordination. I played in them for the first 5 years. And I can say some of those groups would mop the floor with most if not all there are now. That took skill back then. There was no carry sets like DC stacking all the pugs nicely, snow treaders, VD, prox det, etc. Those have made ball groups extremely easy and boring.
It is one person calling direction and counting down prox and mini prox. It’s a joke now.
I acknowledge I am being a hypocrite as like I stated I played and defended that style on the forums, but I know better now.

Zos, I appreciate the effort in initially attempting to make this game a large scale pvp focused game, but you know as well as most of us that the servers just can’t do it. The upgrades were awesome and whenever there isn’t a ball group farming performance is amazing now. But time to throw in the towel before some change that negatively effects PVE and doesn’t correct the problem.

We know performance got drastically better when groups we’re reduced from 24 to 12. Time to lower it farther. I suggest 8 or 6.

As group players often state it takes “teamwork and coordination”. Fine. Lower group size and they won’t be effected due to their teamwork and coordination. They still will be on comms together.

They don’t need the crutch of cross healing which destroys performance and other broken mechanics in their favor. They literally laugh at tanking performance and 95% of the other players not having fun because they are tanking performance and can still farm AP.

The performance was at its worst when groups were capped at 12 (before server updates). When servers were updates performance got 100x better regardless of there being ball groups or not. Ball grouping just within the past year is drastically different with each patch. It still takes a ton of coordination because of the sets that you describes being used against us. It goes both ways. The only way the group I am in can do well against 40-60 people (or against another guild in a GvG) is if we are all on point the whole fight. If anyone missteps they die. One person calls but everyone communicates and has to work together or else we fail. If you think that it is easy I invite you to join one of our raids and see how you do.

No thank you. I did it before as I stated for 5 years. I moved on to solo small scale and realized how much I was crunching on the group. There is no way around it. Having to build for healing, defense, utility, and offense is much more difficult than building for one role.

I watch Tyr from time to time. They are one of the top guilds now. I see how they function. There is no advanced coordination. It’s members knowing their roles and performing on their own. This playstyle entirely crutches on snow treaders and cross healing.

It got extremely stale for me once I got out on my own and so how much more challenging it is to play alone or with 4 or less. If there is no enemy group present, which most of the time there is not as they avoid each other to farm pugs, then it is not difficult at all. A 12 man can and should easily destroy 60 pugs running around due to their stacked HoTs.

I am glad you found what is fun for you, I have also found what is really fun for me. Id like to remind you that ball groups successfully ran all through no proc where boots were not a thing. As for the heal stacking, there is nothing stopping 60 pugs from heal stacking to survive against groups. Literally nothing other than the lack of leadership and coordination that ball groups have. If you watch stream then you know that its more than just the lead talking the entire time. We have to communicate our skills, ults, positions, and when we are in trouble or else we fail. Nothing is stopping other groups or pugs from doing this other than leadership and skill.

But the big difference is to be able to take down groups without another group is slowing them down and separating them from each other and pick them apart. Snow treaders has made it actually stupid easy now removing main weakness.

And no they were not as successful which led to them all flooding forums with cries they were getting slowed or immobilized too much from things like bombard.

Zos, why did you remove the only way solo players, WHO MAKE UP THE MAJORITY OF THE PVP PLAYER BASE, to actually be effective and have a chance at taking down ball groups??????? They tank performance and drive new players away. Like seriously why destroy the experience for 95% of the player base?????

I played in no-proc and proc. We were just as successful then as we are now relative to the meta at the time. Ball groups have nothing to do with performance, that's all on the server side. We had no real impact before or after the server upgrade. Cyrodiil is not majority solo players. Majority of players are in some sort of group or zerg that could easily employ the same tactic that we do to be better.

Sorry bud. But your wrong and wrong. The majority are solo. And Zos literally confirmed that group player introduces the bad performance as a main contributor. Hence group sizes were adjusted.

Not to mention you guys literally demonstrate it every single day when performance goes down the floor the second a AL farm begins.

And please don’t say successful. It is absolutely the easiest form of pvp play 90% of the time for groups. Having each member focus on one role and not have to build and executed offense, defense, and utility is literally the EASIEST form of play.

You not talking to some pug. I played large group at the highest level at launch. And you cannot deny how easy VD, ST, DC, and prox det.

Tevalicious

ShadowProc wrote: »

Tevalicious wrote: »

ShadowProc wrote: »

Tevalicious wrote: »

ShadowProc wrote: »

Tevalicious wrote: »

ShadowProc wrote: »

Tevalicious wrote: »

Ball group healer here. I like that you actually brought tangible changes to the discussion, but it would not stop us. All we would have to do is put more stock into burst healing and damage shields (not difficult changes to make). There will always be a way for ball groups to survive that people will want to nerf. This is probably the most well thought out proposal I have seen to nerfing hot stacking, so props for thinking this hard into it. In my opinion the only way pugs have a chance against ball groups that really don't want to die is to have someone teach them how to counter ball groups. Running at a bull with a bunch of plastic forks will never work if that makes any sense. It will take some degree of coordination to take down the high degree of coordination and teamwork there is in a 12 person ball group.

The ego of ball groups. First off there is not a lot of coordination. I played in them for the first 5 years. And I can say some of those groups would mop the floor with most if not all there are now. That took skill back then. There was no carry sets like DC stacking all the pugs nicely, snow treaders, VD, prox det, etc. Those have made ball groups extremely easy and boring.
It is one person calling direction and counting down prox and mini prox. It’s a joke now.
I acknowledge I am being a hypocrite as like I stated I played and defended that style on the forums, but I know better now.

Zos, I appreciate the effort in initially attempting to make this game a large scale pvp focused game, but you know as well as most of us that the servers just can’t do it. The upgrades were awesome and whenever there isn’t a ball group farming performance is amazing now. But time to throw in the towel before some change that negatively effects PVE and doesn’t correct the problem.

We know performance got drastically better when groups we’re reduced from 24 to 12. Time to lower it farther. I suggest 8 or 6.

As group players often state it takes “teamwork and coordination”. Fine. Lower group size and they won’t be effected due to their teamwork and coordination. They still will be on comms together.

They don’t need the crutch of cross healing which destroys performance and other broken mechanics in their favor. They literally laugh at tanking performance and 95% of the other players not having fun because they are tanking performance and can still farm AP.

The performance was at its worst when groups were capped at 12 (before server updates). When servers were updates performance got 100x better regardless of there being ball groups or not. Ball grouping just within the past year is drastically different with each patch. It still takes a ton of coordination because of the sets that you describes being used against us. It goes both ways. The only way the group I am in can do well against 40-60 people (or against another guild in a GvG) is if we are all on point the whole fight. If anyone missteps they die. One person calls but everyone communicates and has to work together or else we fail. If you think that it is easy I invite you to join one of our raids and see how you do.

No thank you. I did it before as I stated for 5 years. I moved on to solo small scale and realized how much I was crunching on the group. There is no way around it. Having to build for healing, defense, utility, and offense is much more difficult than building for one role.

I watch Tyr from time to time. They are one of the top guilds now. I see how they function. There is no advanced coordination. It’s members knowing their roles and performing on their own. This playstyle entirely crutches on snow treaders and cross healing.

It got extremely stale for me once I got out on my own and so how much more challenging it is to play alone or with 4 or less. If there is no enemy group present, which most of the time there is not as they avoid each other to farm pugs, then it is not difficult at all. A 12 man can and should easily destroy 60 pugs running around due to their stacked HoTs.

I am glad you found what is fun for you, I have also found what is really fun for me. Id like to remind you that ball groups successfully ran all through no proc where boots were not a thing. As for the heal stacking, there is nothing stopping 60 pugs from heal stacking to survive against groups. Literally nothing other than the lack of leadership and coordination that ball groups have. If you watch stream then you know that its more than just the lead talking the entire time. We have to communicate our skills, ults, positions, and when we are in trouble or else we fail. Nothing is stopping other groups or pugs from doing this other than leadership and skill.

But the big difference is to be able to take down groups without another group is slowing them down and separating them from each other and pick them apart. Snow treaders has made it actually stupid easy now removing main weakness.

And no they were not as successful which led to them all flooding forums with cries they were getting slowed or immobilized too much from things like bombard.

Zos, why did you remove the only way solo players, WHO MAKE UP THE MAJORITY OF THE PVP PLAYER BASE, to actually be effective and have a chance at taking down ball groups??????? They tank performance and drive new players away. Like seriously why destroy the experience for 95% of the player base?????

I played in no-proc and proc. We were just as successful then as we are now relative to the meta at the time. Ball groups have nothing to do with performance, that's all on the server side. We had no real impact before or after the server upgrade. Cyrodiil is not majority solo players. Majority of players are in some sort of group or zerg that could easily employ the same tactic that we do to be better.

Sorry bud. But your wrong and wrong. The majority are solo. And Zos literally confirmed that group player introduces the bad performance as a main contributor. Hence group sizes were adjusted.

Not to mention you guys literally demonstrate it every single day when performance goes down the floor the second a AL farm begins.

And please don’t say successful. It is absolutely the easiest form of pvp play 90% of the time for groups. Having each member focus on one role and not have to build and executed offense, defense, and utility is literally the EASIEST form of play.

You not talking to some pug. I played large group at the highest level at launch. And you cannot deny how easy VD, ST, DC, and prox det.

I play multiple times every week, most people are running in a group of people. Whether they are IN a group or not is beside the point. If they are surrounded by players and do not group up, that is their choice. 90% of players are in cyrodiil as a group or zerg. If group size was a problem and adjusted then its no longer a problem. Playing in a guild that ran 3-4 24 person groups is nothing like how 12 person groups run now. If you think that is it, I invite you to play with us and see how well you really do. Also VD, Proxy, and Pulls are not the only part of a ball group. That's just the damage portion. There is so much more to the raid that you clearly do not understand.

Supershutze

One of the big issues with ball groups is the underlying problem behind a lot of pvp balance that nobody seems to grasp: Heal meta.

There is no tank meta, it's just heal meta wearing armour.

There is no burst meta, that's just the only way to bypass heal meta.

Heal meta has been the root of all the big balance problems facing pvp.

Simply put, heals are *way* too powerful, across the board, in pvp and pve, for people that haven't specced into heals.

Imagine a guy with 64 points in health and wearing tank gear parsing for 100k. That's basically the state of heals right now; ridiculous return for literally zero investment.

So what's the solution? Reduce heals: Slash healing *in half,* or more, and buff sets that CP that boost healing to compensate. Get rid of self-heals double dipping on both healing done and healing received.

The only people who should be able to cast those juicy 18k+ burst heals are the people who have specialized in healing.

This helps combat ball groups because suddenly the only people with cross-heals that are worth a damn are the healers, who have to give up damage and durability in exchange.

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO

Supershutze wrote: »

One of the big issues with ball groups is the underlying problem behind a lot of pvp balance that nobody seems to grasp: Heal meta.

There is no tank meta, it's just heal meta wearing armour.

There is no burst meta, that's just the only way to bypass heal meta.

Heal meta has been the root of all the big balance problems facing pvp.

Simply put, heals are *way* too powerful, across the board, in pvp and pve, for people that haven't specced into heals.

Imagine a guy with 64 points in health and wearing tank gear parsing for 100k. That's basically the state of heals right now; ridiculous return for literally zero investment.

So what's the solution? Reduce heals: Slash healing *in half,* or more, and buff sets that CP that boost healing to compensate. Get rid of self-heals double dipping on both healing done and healing received.

The only people who should be able to cast those juicy 18k+ burst heals are the people who have specialized in healing.

This helps combat ball groups because suddenly the only people with cross-heals that are worth a damn are the healers, who have to give up damage and durability in exchange.

This is somewhat correct. I would likely do something different than focusing on sets for the answer as too much of the game is derived from sets currently.

The core issue comes from the fact that healing and damage scale from the same attributes and so health stacking doesn't really affect output because spell damage can still be stacked into with no loss of health and limited impact on healing. Additionally regen is very easily boosted in groups due to orb/lamia's/monster helms/other sets which in turn boosts the damage groups can stack into allowing them to again - focus on health to stay alive.

Healing in ESO used to be primarily ground based which made group combat interesting because it required some level of skill from healers to predict group movement and pre-heal in the right areas. Additionally negate was far more impactful as it removed the ground healing which would then have to be re-stacked causing a significant drop in total output for groups. (Negate at the time was less powerful than it is now so it would actually be a far stronger counter these days if that healing meta was re-introduced.)
This was removed because players complained it was too strong (and ZOS thought it might help performance, which got worse instead) however it was actually Earthgore which was mainly carrying at that time.

ZOS then pivoted to Sticky HoT healing. This is far worse because there is no way for a player to remove a HoT from a group.
HoT Healing is really a lot less skilled in general because players don't need to think where the group will be moving to, to setup pre-healing, and only need to focus on their own positioning spamming out as many HoT's as possible and then just burst healing once someone gets low. Couple this with health stacking which means the time between someone getting low and requiring a burst heal and dying is increased (this is the reason groups stack health) and it gives healers more time to react to this where as before they had to understand the current combat and predict these health drops essentially.

The issue is that this 'increased time for reaction' is kind of in line with ZOS's current goals of dumbing down combat lowering the ceiling and so I doubt this will actually ever be addressed.

Things to do which would make it more interesting:
1) Bring back self-stacking on ground healing and slightly increase the potency of it although this can be adjusted over time.
2) Remove earthgore and add a second ultimate in a general tree which can negate ground effects to allow for class diversity. (undaunted ultimate maybe ?)
3) Adjust Vigor and Regeneration to 5s HoTs (similar numbers to self burst healing) which makes it more viable to solo players and still keeps it relevant. Make the Regeneration morphs similar to bubble and vigor, where one always goes to you and one has extra effects.
4) Adjust scaling so that main attribute affects healing more than Spell/Physical damage.
5) Change attributes so that health no longer scales unevenly with mainstat.
6) Adjust tri-stat glyphs and food so that they work by giving a 1:1 on health/mainstat (make them smart in this respect) and then 0.5 in off stat instead of 1 - they currently give too much power
7) Scale orbs similar to the Dark Exchange to give 1/2 stat and then a regen. Make this form of regen a new major/minor buff and share it with Dark Exchange, Symphony of Blades and Lamia (for different durations). This will keep the power in those sets but lower the stacking effects.
8) Limit players to group only healing when they are in a group. Solo players can still heal anyone but don't benefit from group sets and buffs.

Supershutze

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO wrote: »

This is somewhat correct. I would likely do something different than focusing on sets for the answer as too much of the game is derived from sets currently.

The core issue comes from the fact that healing and damage scale from the same attributes and so health stacking doesn't really affect output because spell damage can still be stacked into with no loss of health and limited impact on healing. Additionally regen is very easily boosted in groups due to orb/lamia's/monster helms/other sets which in turn boosts the damage groups can stack into allowing them to again - focus on health to stay alive.

Healing in ESO used to be primarily ground based which made group combat interesting because it required some level of skill from healers to predict group movement and pre-heal in the right areas. Additionally negate was far more impactful as it removed the ground healing which would then have to be re-stacked causing a significant drop in total output for groups. (Negate at the time was less powerful than it is now so it would actually be a far stronger counter these days if that healing meta was re-introduced.)
This was removed because players complained it was too strong (and ZOS thought it might help performance, which got worse instead) however it was actually Earthgore which was mainly carrying at that time.

ZOS then pivoted to Sticky HoT healing. This is far worse because there is no way for a player to remove a HoT from a group.
HoT Healing is really a lot less skilled in general because players don't need to think where the group will be moving to, to setup pre-healing, and only need to focus on their own positioning spamming out as many HoT's as possible and then just burst healing once someone gets low. Couple this with health stacking which means the time between someone getting low and requiring a burst heal and dying is increased (this is the reason groups stack health) and it gives healers more time to react to this where as before they had to understand the current combat and predict these health drops essentially.

The issue is that this 'increased time for reaction' is kind of in line with ZOS's current goals of dumbing down combat lowering the ceiling and so I doubt this will actually ever be addressed.

Things to do which would make it more interesting:
1) Bring back self-stacking on ground healing and slightly increase the potency of it although this can be adjusted over time.
2) Remove earthgore and add a second ultimate in a general tree which can negate ground effects to allow for class diversity. (undaunted ultimate maybe ?)
3) Adjust Vigor and Regeneration to 5s HoTs (similar numbers to self burst healing) which makes it more viable to solo players and still keeps it relevant. Make the Regeneration morphs similar to bubble and vigor, where one always goes to you and one has extra effects.
4) Adjust scaling so that main attribute affects healing more than Spell/Physical damage.
5) Change attributes so that health no longer scales unevenly with mainstat.
6) Adjust tri-stat glyphs and food so that they work by giving a 1:1 on health/mainstat (make them smart in this respect) and then 0.5 in off stat instead of 1 - they currently give too much power
7) Scale orbs similar to the Dark Exchange to give 1/2 stat and then a regen. Make this form of regen a new major/minor buff and share it with Dark Exchange, Symphony of Blades and Lamia (for different durations). This will keep the power in those sets but lower the stacking effects.
8) Limit players to group only healing when they are in a group. Solo players can still heal anyone but don't benefit from group sets and buffs.

There are some good ideas here, but you still run into the problem where people building for damage get boosted healing for free. i.e people will just return to max resource meta because that will give damage as well as healing.

There needs to a be a serious tradeoff> Damage/healing/durability: Building for one needs to involve sacrifices to the other two.

I'm proposing sets and CP changes because it would be a feasible thing to do; it's not the most perfect solution, but it's a fantastic bandaid.

A much better, albeit difficult to implement solution would be a complete refactor of the game's stats, introducing a new stat that healing scales off, i.e healing power or something.

NordSwordnBoard

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO wrote: »

Healing in ESO used to be primarily ground based which made group combat interesting because it required some level of skill from healers to predict group movement and pre-heal in the right areas. Additionally negate was far more impactful as it removed the ground healing which would then have to be re-stacked causing a significant drop in total output for groups. (Negate at the time was less powerful than it is now so it would actually be a far stronger counter these days if that healing meta was re-introduced.)
This was removed because players complained it was too strong (and ZOS thought it might help performance, which got worse instead) however it was actually Earthgore which was mainly carrying at that time.

I remember this type of combat, and pushes vs opponent groups had more to do with holding pieces of land. Currently, I'm getting heals from people who aren't aiming them at me, sometimes when I'm behind them and out of view. There is always clamor on the forums about fixing HoT stacking, making people aim the heals is a start to reducing how effective they are.

Switching back to a ground based heal meta might be ok for both PvE (healers already have positioning to see targets) and PvP would simply require more skill while increasing death by missed heal. The goal being to increase the margin of error by healers in PvP but not PvE. I'd be curious to see just this change go into pts.

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO

Supershutze wrote: »

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO wrote: »

This is somewhat correct. I would likely do something different than focusing on sets for the answer as too much of the game is derived from sets currently.

The core issue comes from the fact that healing and damage scale from the same attributes and so health stacking doesn't really affect output because spell damage can still be stacked into with no loss of health and limited impact on healing. Additionally regen is very easily boosted in groups due to orb/lamia's/monster helms/other sets which in turn boosts the damage groups can stack into allowing them to again - focus on health to stay alive.

Healing in ESO used to be primarily ground based which made group combat interesting because it required some level of skill from healers to predict group movement and pre-heal in the right areas. Additionally negate was far more impactful as it removed the ground healing which would then have to be re-stacked causing a significant drop in total output for groups. (Negate at the time was less powerful than it is now so it would actually be a far stronger counter these days if that healing meta was re-introduced.)
This was removed because players complained it was too strong (and ZOS thought it might help performance, which got worse instead) however it was actually Earthgore which was mainly carrying at that time.

ZOS then pivoted to Sticky HoT healing. This is far worse because there is no way for a player to remove a HoT from a group.
HoT Healing is really a lot less skilled in general because players don't need to think where the group will be moving to, to setup pre-healing, and only need to focus on their own positioning spamming out as many HoT's as possible and then just burst healing once someone gets low. Couple this with health stacking which means the time between someone getting low and requiring a burst heal and dying is increased (this is the reason groups stack health) and it gives healers more time to react to this where as before they had to understand the current combat and predict these health drops essentially.

The issue is that this 'increased time for reaction' is kind of in line with ZOS's current goals of dumbing down combat lowering the ceiling and so I doubt this will actually ever be addressed.

Things to do which would make it more interesting:
1) Bring back self-stacking on ground healing and slightly increase the potency of it although this can be adjusted over time.
2) Remove earthgore and add a second ultimate in a general tree which can negate ground effects to allow for class diversity. (undaunted ultimate maybe ?)
3) Adjust Vigor and Regeneration to 5s HoTs (similar numbers to self burst healing) which makes it more viable to solo players and still keeps it relevant. Make the Regeneration morphs similar to bubble and vigor, where one always goes to you and one has extra effects.
4) Adjust scaling so that main attribute affects healing more than Spell/Physical damage.
5) Change attributes so that health no longer scales unevenly with mainstat.
6) Adjust tri-stat glyphs and food so that they work by giving a 1:1 on health/mainstat (make them smart in this respect) and then 0.5 in off stat instead of 1 - they currently give too much power
7) Scale orbs similar to the Dark Exchange to give 1/2 stat and then a regen. Make this form of regen a new major/minor buff and share it with Dark Exchange, Symphony of Blades and Lamia (for different durations). This will keep the power in those sets but lower the stacking effects.
8) Limit players to group only healing when they are in a group. Solo players can still heal anyone but don't benefit from group sets and buffs.

There are some good ideas here, but you still run into the problem where people building for damage get boosted healing for free. i.e people will just return to max resource meta because that will give damage as well as healing.

There needs to a be a serious tradeoff> Damage/healing/durability: Building for one needs to involve sacrifices to the other two.

I'm proposing sets and CP changes because it would be a feasible thing to do; it's not the most perfect solution, but it's a fantastic bandaid.

A much better, albeit difficult to implement solution would be a complete refactor of the game's stats, introducing a new stat that healing scales off, i.e healing power or something.

I guess I wasn't explicit in my post but I was intending that scaling would be split for healing and damage i.e. Damage scales with spell/physical damage and healing with mainstat.

Oakenaxe

Good discussion here. Reading all these proposals just stresses out how important it is for PvP and PvE to be balanced separately. Much of the changes proposed here would not be welcomed by the PvE part of the game.

etchedpixels

Supershutze wrote: »

So what's the solution? Reduce heals: Slash healing *in half,* or more, and buff sets that CP that boost healing to compensate. Get rid of self-heals double dipping on both healing done and healing received.

And then you get shield spamming instead. Ball groups can happily adapt to that whilst the heal changes hurt everyone else more.

The whole game does have a healing problem. It's crazy that on my warden tank for example I can start the Blackwood end story boss and go for a toilet break, come back and I'm still at full health because I'm running over 5K self heals without mythics and I have a continuous damage shield too.

Iriidius

Supershutze wrote: »

One of the big issues with ball groups is the underlying problem behind a lot of pvp balance that nobody seems to grasp: Heal meta.

There is no tank meta, it's just heal meta wearing armour.

There is no burst meta, that's just the only way to bypass heal meta.

Heal meta has been the root of all the big balance problems facing pvp.

Simply put, heals are *way* too powerful, across the board, in pvp and pve, for people that haven't specced into heals.

Imagine a guy with 64 points in health and wearing tank gear parsing for 100k. That's basically the state of heals right now; ridiculous return for literally zero investment.

So what's the solution? Reduce heals: Slash healing *in half,* or more, and buff sets that CP that boost healing to compensate. Get rid of self-heals double dipping on both healing done and healing received.

The only people who should be able to cast those juicy 18k+ burst heals are the people who have specialized in healing.

This helps combat ball groups because suddenly the only people with cross-heals that are worth a damn are the healers, who have to give up damage and durability in exchange.

You say you want to nerf ball groups, but your changes will hurt solo players and group players with solo builds even more. You want to nerf self healing even more than cross healing, althought the heal meta is mostly a group thing. If you cross heal someone he double dipps on your healing done and his healing received. When I loose a fight as a solo player, it is almost always because the dmg i receive is higher than my healing despite active defense or because i run out of ressoursses. Sustain also is what tanky high dmg builds have to sacrifice to get high dmg and tankiness, and what should make them last not as long as builds with more sustain and less dmg/tankiness. However many tanky high dmg builds also have unlimited sustain and will also find a way to get high healing stat. Healers often have very much sustain, many have 3 mag regen glyphs. Usually they also wear tank or group buff or healing proc sets, so they dont have high dmh/healing stats. A healer is not a healer because he has a high healin tooltip, a healer is a healer because he heals other players and casts many healing skills. Dmg and Healing both scale with wpn/spell dmg, max mag/stam and crit chance/dmg but only healing scales with healing done/received(malubeth, daedrick trickery, diagna) and only dmg scales with dmg dealt(essensse thief), enemy dmg received, wpn dmg for specific types of dmg(war maiden, silks of sun, automaton usw) /against specific targets(witch knight) and penetration.
The only ones profitting from your change are groups with seperate dds and healers were only the healers are healing. Ball groups often have a few pure healers, full time Zerglings also often have healers, tanks and dds, because they are dont look at their health bar when attacking. Why do we want to enforce different roles in PvP when it doesnt even work in PvE, where most people want to be DDs, slotting 1 self heal and random queue is full of fake tanks, fake healers and tanking/healing dds?