Occult overload / plaguebreak / Vicious death

Danse_Mayhem

Dear ZOS, please review these procs.

I’m sure there’s going to be a lot of “hurr durr if these bother you then you’re a zergling”

No, 2 of these things proc on GUARDS.

Playing solo = No chance whatsoever against ball groups stacking.

Playing with even one other person or anywhere near NPCs = You are at a huge risk of taking 12800 oblivion damage from a single slottable CP (which everyone has on now) + VD/PB.

This is doing -nothing- to bust open ball groups / zergs. All it achieves is another tool for organised ball groups to decimate small group play / solo players who get too close to NPCs

Back in the day it was a viable tactic to use guards as line of sight if you were defending a keep and severely outnumbered… Now if you do that, you just get nuked by occult overload / Plaguebreak from NPCs who get in the way.
We have a situation where it’s more viable to wait for an enemy Zerg to wipe out your defenders and THEN try to fight back. And on the flip side, when attacking, it’s more effective to just dark convergence a load of guards towards enemy players and get a few occult overload / plaguebreak procs on the guards to kill enemy players, rather than even targeting the players…

Occult overload was in a good place at 4000 damage last patch. Why triple it??

Every.Single.Player. In the midyear event is a copy paste bomber build and almost every group fight ends with one side instantly blowing up to one or more of these proc sets.

My suggested solution ;

Please stop plaguebreak and occult overload from proccing on guards, and reduce occult overload back to its previous form. It’s genuinely the most broken OP slottable CP in the game.

alternatelder

I don't know about anyone else but I am so sick of the bomb meta right now. VD is fine, it should remain untouched though. The other two are 98% of everyone's death recaps.

OnGodiDoDis

I've brought this up several times that all bombers are running the same gear/class. These things just incentivize this playstyle and that's why we see 90% of people running necro bombers; because it's simply the most effective way to take keeps. It's their "solution" to the lag. Instead of fixing the servers years ago, they just gave us ways to kill each other more quickly.

kevkj

I don't think Vicious Death procs on guards.

Cuddlypuff

OnGodiDoDis wrote: »

I've brought this up several times that all bombers are running the same gear/class. These things just incentivize this playstyle and that's why we see 90% of people running necro bombers; because it's simply the most effective way to take keeps. It's their "solution" to the lag. Instead of fixing the servers years ago, they just gave us ways to kill each other more quickly.

All 6 classes can bomb. In fact the only common denominator is Plaguebreak. The better bombers do not run gear setups or playstyles that non-bombers / bad bombers would guess or even understand. The bad ones copy paste mediocre builds from youtube but are irrelevant and ineffective anyway.

If ZOS wanted to nerf bombing, they would need to delete Plaguebreak. Changing VD, occult or dark convergence will achieve nothing. The amount of crying over Dcon just proves that the majority of people have no idea how bombing actually works and will continue to get dumpstered even after the Dcon cooldown nerf.

Master_Kas

kevkj wrote: »

I don't think Vicious Death procs on guards.

It doesn't. Plaguebreak does tho, occult overload not sure.

MEBengalsFan2001

Occult overload should be adjusted. That is the thing that is killing me the most not Plaguebreak or VD. And the thing with occult overload you don't need to use any gear sets, you simply just need to stack and kill a target to cause it to proc it.

This mod it is all about the bombs we can get off.

jaws343

Master_Kas wrote: »

kevkj wrote: »

I don't think Vicious Death procs on guards.

It doesn't. Plaguebreak does tho, occult overload not sure.

Occult Overload definitely does.

Holycannoli

A few of us brought up Occult Overload as OP as soon as we saw the change to it. Not sure why it hasn't been addressed since then. Maybe for PvE it's working as intended?

jaws343

Holycannoli wrote: »

A few of us brought up Occult Overload as OP as soon as we saw the change to it. Not sure why it hasn't been addressed since then. Maybe for PvE it's working as intended?

I currently run it in PVE. It adds a ton of pressure while soloing vet content. But also, it wouldn't be missed if it were reduced back down.

DigiAngel

Is PB even a threat nowadays? Unless someone has an auto purge, you just run from the group and let it tick out. Unless I've missed something..

aurelius_fx

DigiAngel wrote: »

Is PB even a threat nowadays? Unless someone has an auto purge, you just run from the group and let it tick out. Unless I've missed something..

it explodes if someone nearby dies, plus VD, plus occult overload... that can be over 30k damage and if you manage to get another kill with it it keeps doubling, not to mention occult overload being oblivion damage so it's unaffected by battle spirit

DigiAngel

Hmmm...that does not seem to be in the description:

Dealing direct damage to an enemy, who is not a Plague Carrier, turns them into a Plague Carrier for 10 seconds, dealing 1715 Disease Damage over the duration. If the plague is removed early, it explodes, infecting enemies within 8 meters of the carrier and dealing 712 Disease Damage. The explosion deals an additional 50% damage per enemy hit. This effect can occur once per attack and scales off the higher of your Weapon or Spell Damage.

Again..am I missing something?

NordSwordnBoard

DigiAngel wrote: »

Hmmm...that does not seem to be in the description:

Dealing direct damage to an enemy, who is not a Plague Carrier, turns them into a Plague Carrier for 10 seconds, dealing 1715 Disease Damage over the duration. If the plague is removed early, it explodes, infecting enemies within 8 meters of the carrier and dealing 712 Disease Damage. The explosion deals an additional 50% damage per enemy hit. This effect can occur once per attack and scales off the higher of your Weapon or Spell Damage.

Again..am I missing something?

Yes try testing it yourself. Death = removed early.

Oakenaxe

Danse_Mayhem wrote: »

Please stop plaguebreak and occult overload from proccing on guards, and reduce occult overload back to its previous form. It’s genuinely the most broken OP slottable CP in the game.

I agree, this shouldn't be a thing.

DigiAngel

NordSwordnBoard wrote: »

DigiAngel wrote: »

Hmmm...that does not seem to be in the description:

Dealing direct damage to an enemy, who is not a Plague Carrier, turns them into a Plague Carrier for 10 seconds, dealing 1715 Disease Damage over the duration. If the plague is removed early, it explodes, infecting enemies within 8 meters of the carrier and dealing 712 Disease Damage. The explosion deals an additional 50% damage per enemy hit. This effect can occur once per attack and scales off the higher of your Weapon or Spell Damage.

Again..am I missing something?

Yes try testing it yourself. Death = removed early.

LoL...well I guess technically that's right isn't it...if you died it DID get removed early..ha!

umagon

Running all three on a nightblade during mayhem week produces some juicy ap. Even at long range with well timed elemental rings and force pulses. You can stealth elemental ring for the multi target stun then when someone with low health explodes, they all explode.

Danse_Mayhem

Another example for you that I encountered yesterday.

I ran into a resource and there was an enemy DK on the flag with a single mender guard next to him… I started attacking and got the guy to 50% health, then he uses corrosive armour. So he would be pretty safe from my attacks for a while right?

Wrong. Since I was using force pulse, the splash damage hit the guard next to him, killing the guard and causing the guy to take occult overload for 12800 since that goes through corrosive. Obv at the time I found it funny but it’s a stupid mechanic and the guy was probably (and understandably) raging as he would have likely had a fighting chance if he didn’t have -friendly- NPCs nearby.

When oblivion damage was reworked in the past, it was toned right down and changed to deal % based on enemy health, like sloads and glyphs etc do. So I’ve no idea why that went full circle and now hits harder than almost ever proc set / skill for just a slottable CP?

geonsocal

geonsocal

Holycannoli wrote: »

A few of us brought up Occult Overload as OP as soon as we saw the change to it. Not sure why it hasn't been addressed since then. Maybe for PvE it's working as intended?

for pvp it is working as intended...as is plaguebreak, as is vicious death...watch your spacing...

geonsocal

and, if you really want to feel better about the world - plaguebreak and vicious death can be bought in guild stores (other means to get them both also)...occult overload is within the champion point system...grind enough xp and it's all yours to use...

equip on just about any kind of build and go have fun wiping the others folks that like bunching up so much...

if you have have to be in an area with lots of folks, pop a potion, do some preemptive healing and roll-dodging...things happen though...dark convergence, choke points, flags and lag can simply make it hard to avoid areas where a lot of kills occur...

jaws343

geonsocal wrote: »

Holycannoli wrote: »

A few of us brought up Occult Overload as OP as soon as we saw the change to it. Not sure why it hasn't been addressed since then. Maybe for PvE it's working as intended?

for pvp it is working as intended...as is plaguebreak, as is vicious death...watch your spacing...

Kind of hard to watch your spacing against NPCs that literally follow you in melee range. Like, just taking a resource alone could get you killed with Occult Overload.

Watch your spacing should be a Player interaction only. Not also having to worry about NPCs.

Ankael07

React

I mean, here is us killing a ballgroup 3v12 using plague/occult. Wouldn't have been possible without those two things.

https://streamable.com/1et2s3

There are two things that need to happen, in order for combating ballgroups to become a reality. First, heal stacking needs to be nerfed. You should not be able to have more than one of a specific HOT on you at a time (so no 6x radiant regens and 6x echoing vigors). Two, they need to do some sort of expoential scaling on AOEs.

For example, if they reduce the tooltips of AOE spammables such as pulsar, steel tornado, cleave, sap essence, necro scythe, dk deep breath, etc, but then added exponential scaling of + 50% per target, there would be much more counterplay to groups stacking via these abilities. Right now you simply cannot even deal damage to ball groups unless you instantly nuke them with a negate + plague + occult + synergy combo, because they have every mitigation buff in the game and 10k+ hps ticking on every player from their stacked heal over times.

If I had the ability to hit 10 people with my aoe spammable and have it deal 500% more damage, even with a much lower base tooltip this would give me the potential to combat players that rely on stacking like ball groups do.

The best part about this? It wouldn't be sets or CP doing all the work for you, like is the case now with PB/occult. The truth about ball groups is that often times, most of the players aren't very indivually skilled and simply rely on absurd amounts of healing and mitigation to stay alive. Meanwhile, they can just spam AOEs and proc sets to deal the damage they need. If they were required to actually hit multiple targets to get effectiveness out of the aoes they are spamming, they would need to be much more skillful about where and when they use their aoes. Simultaneously, they would need to be wary of stacking as they could be hit with exponentially higher AOE damage.

It seems like a pretty obvious solution to a problem zenimax has been trying to solve for years.

neferpitou73

Master_Kas wrote: »

kevkj wrote: »

I don't think Vicious Death procs on guards.

It doesn't. Plaguebreak does tho, occult overload not sure.

O_O does proc on guards

geonsocal wrote: »

Holycannoli wrote: »

A few of us brought up Occult Overload as OP as soon as we saw the change to it. Not sure why it hasn't been addressed since then. Maybe for PvE it's working as intended?

for pvp it is working as intended...as is plaguebreak, as is vicious death...watch your spacing...

ZOS: Yep watch your spacing! Oh and here are two new sets that stack your enemies for you ^_^

React wrote: »

I mean, here is us killing a ballgroup 3v12 using plague/occult. Wouldn't have been possible without those two things.

https://streamable.com/1et2s3

There are two things that need to happen, in order for combating ballgroups to become a reality. First, heal stacking needs to be nerfed. You should not be able to have more than one of a specific HOT on you at a time (so no 6x radiant regens and 6x echoing vigors). Two, they need to do some sort of expoential scaling on AOEs.

For example, if they reduce the tooltips of AOE spammables such as pulsar, steel tornado, cleave, sap essence, necro scythe, dk deep breath, etc, but then added exponential scaling of + 50% per target, there would be much more counterplay to groups stacking via these abilities. Right now you simply cannot even deal damage to ball groups unless you instantly nuke them with a negate + plague + occult + synergy combo, because they have every mitigation buff in the game and 10k+ hps ticking on every player from their stacked heal over times.

If I had the ability to hit 10 people with my aoe spammable and have it deal 500% more damage, even with a much lower base tooltip this would give me the potential to combat players that rely on stacking like ball groups do.

The best part about this? It wouldn't be sets or CP doing all the work for you, like is the case now with PB/occult. The truth about ball groups is that often times, most of the players aren't very indivually skilled and simply rely on absurd amounts of healing and mitigation to stay alive. Meanwhile, they can just spam AOEs and proc sets to deal the damage they need. If they were required to actually hit multiple targets to get effectiveness out of the aoes they are spamming, they would need to be much more skillful about where and when they use their aoes. Simultaneously, they would need to be wary of stacking as they could be hit with exponentially higher AOE damage.

It seems like a pretty obvious solution to a problem zenimax has been trying to solve for years.

Ball groups are an issue but this is about the worst way to go about fixing it and gives small scale way too much power.

You shouldn't have the nigh invulnerability some ball groups have now but discouraging grouping in an MMO is backwards. And make no mistake it would affect zergs as well, my group runs Master's 2H/Brawler for the reason of increased damage on stacks.

A lot of the current issue with ball groups right now is the scaling of heals and damage with the same stats, which all got a massive boost with hybridization. For perspective the damage numbers have gotten so obscene that some groups run 8 healers and 4 DDs because 4 DDs is all they need (and if your solution was implemented they would likely just increase the number of DDs to compensate). That should be the target, along with harmony. But as the thread is not on ball groups I won't rant on this here.

React

neferpitou73 wrote: »

"Give me an insta-win button that lets me wipe large groups" Um no.

Ball groups are an issue but this is about the worst way to go about fixing it.

I mean, that is not at all what I am suggesting here.

To be clear, I do not enjoy instantly killing groups of experienced or non experienced players with plaguebreak and occult overload. It does not feel like I am earning the kills, or like I need to do anything particularly skillful. I would prefer that these two things did not exist in the game. I also think that dark convergence and rushing agony should not exist in PVP.

Let me make an example for you. Let's take power extraction (the stam morph of sap essence) as an example. On live, I generally hit a properly geared pvp player for about 4k with power extraction. Sometimes I can hit as high as 5k if they're squishy or if I incap them, and sometimes I'll hit as low as 2k if they're using major evasion.

Now let's say that zenimax reduces the base tooltip value of power extraction by 50%, but adds a scaling factor of +50% per target hit.

This would require me to hit 3 players to reach my current live average of 4k power extractions. Hitting 5 players would bring that value to 6k, 7 players would be 8k, 9 players would be 10k, 11 players would be 12k. Keep in mind that this is a 7 meter AOE with a high cost.

This is by no means a free win button when compared to occult overload, which hits 12.8k every time or plaguebreak, which has the potential to hit upwards of 30k and has the most bogus spreading/exponetial multipliers in the entire game attached to it.

The problem with these sets and CP, which are meant to combat the stacking of players and specifically ball groups, is that they benefit the ball groups FAR more than any smaller or less coordinated players trying to fight them. Ball group players are nearly unkillable from these things as they'll simply not purge, and never die as they've got every hot/mitigation buff in the game as well as 40k hp on most players.

If instead we are given these exponential aoes while things like plague and occult are nerfed, ball groups and players in general would need to actively avoid stacking in close proximity to one another to avoid one (or several) players hitting them with high damage aoes and wiping them.

On the flip side, the AOEs that these groups spam will be far less effective in general, until they're in close proximity to many players at which point they too will be susceptible to getting hit with high damage AOEs.

edit: just to address the rest of your comment, since you edited it to include much more effort than your original remark, this isn't meant to discourage grouping. It is meant to discourage the behavior of stacking all of your players within a 10 meter radius and becoming fully unkillable, while outputting enough AOE damage to instantly kill anything you get in range of. The numbers I mentioned are purely an example; if something like this was implemented it would need to be carefully balanced. But make no mistake - this is the way to specifically target and nerf ballgroups without severely harming your average players, or simply providing another tool that ballgroups utilize better.

geonsocal

jaws343 wrote: »

geonsocal wrote: »

Holycannoli wrote: »

A few of us brought up Occult Overload as OP as soon as we saw the change to it. Not sure why it hasn't been addressed since then. Maybe for PvE it's working as intended?

for pvp it is working as intended...as is plaguebreak, as is vicious death...watch your spacing...

Kind of hard to watch your spacing against NPCs that literally follow you in melee range. Like, just taking a resource alone could get you killed with Occult Overload.

Watch your spacing should be a Player interaction only. Not also having to worry about NPCs.

i guess my point is this - i play solo and i really enjoy defending...i've used vicious death for years, i have it on one of my builds now...i used plaguebreak for a while, doesn't really suit any of my builds though right now...

pretty much every single one of my toons though (17) has Occult Overload slotted...if they don't, it'll be for a specific reason...

my first exposure to the kind of stuff we're doing here was dungeons & dragons back in the early 80's...there was this thing called a "dungeon master", basically someone that serves as host/judge for the game...it's fun for a while, with the whole group dynamic - it gets weird fast though...

was so happy when they came out with Pools of Radiance on the commodore 64...

my point here is - we are playing at the whims of a dungeon master...

geonsocal

okay, back to serious talk...i've read and appreciate what it is that you are saying...

from my perspective - if there are 12 or more players tightly grouped together - they 100% deserve to explode - myself included, particularly if i got caught reading the map...

i understand though it affects other type play beside for organized groups - who pretty much are impossible to kill with plaguebreak/vicious death/occult overload/cold-fire seige/molag ball with the volendrung hammer and 10,000 imperial mercenaries...

if it's a fun fight inside a keep and like at least a few of the enemy group are falling to like triple the odds plus siege, i'll participate...if the only folks dying are us, i'm gonna leave after a while...i gotta be really really bored to wanna get farmed...

i don't know, someone above mentioned this being a poor developing tool for managing the ball group problem...

remember though how performance was addressed by decreasing the population of cyrodiil (and getting rid of the deer )...that's a big zone map, lots of calculations...

xxslam48xxb14_ESO

I really miss pre bomb build cyrodiil. With zos's new goal being to make the game easier for new/bad players its a little odd that they leave this kinda stuff in pvp. Literally only punishes newbs for grouping up(which they need to do because they are newbs). Punished for being a noob and its not like tightly packed newbies are difficult to kill with normal aoe anyways.

geonsocal

xxslam48xxb14_ESO wrote: »

Punished for being a noob and its not like tightly packed newbies are difficult to kill with normal aoe anyways.

this is a great point...besides for strictly "developing" towards the majority of the people participating in pvp, which from my experience are made up of a lot of the same type of folks, there should be greater consistent effort (besides for mayhem) to welcome folks new to pvp...

zos should 100% re-work the training grounds within the starting areas...

us folks hooked on cyrodiil are very dependent on pvp "noobs"...over the years so many regular pvp'rs have left the game...

I have received many titles, to my allies I am The sniper Emperor and Grand champion hero of the Pact. However these titles mean little to me, it is the ones given to me by my victims that I prefer.

Dojohoda

Plaguebreak proccing on a guard is brutal.