PVP Balance in U37 - In Depth Balance Suggestions

PhoenixGrey

Every spec in this game has lost its identity except stamblade while also lowering the ceiling of pvp gameplay

Xandreia_

zos just hire this man!! please!

SillyGT

I strongly agree with everything on this post. One thing that could be added to this list is a nerf to synergies or harmony in general. On high damage builds someone can activate them without harmony can get very high numbers. Then with harmony the damage output is astronomical. I feel like harmony enabled this type of heal over time spam gameplay. Its introduction into the game from a pvp stand point needs to be adjusted further. There should be a spot for it in organized groups but in its current state it is far better than any other jewelry trait. Just a slight adjustment to synergies or harmony it self would be sufficient enough. My suggestion for the harmony trait would be to bring it down from 20 on gold pieces to 10, most builds that use it are using three at a time. Which still would be a 30% increase to all synergies which is still far better than any other buff or debuffs can give.

MidniteOwl1913

Honestly, I don't care what nerfs happen in PVP as long as it *stays* in PVP. I'm really tired of PVP "balance" being the reason I can't have nice things in PVE.

And I don't know why ZOS can't seem to separate the two, but at this point expecting them to isn't reasonable.

Melzo

SillyGT wrote: »

I strongly agree with everything on this post. One thing that could be added to this list is a nerf to synergies or harmony in general. On high damage builds someone can activate them without harmony can get very high numbers. Then with harmony the damage output is astronomical. I feel like harmony enabled this type of heal over time spam gameplay. Its introduction into the game from a pvp stand point needs to be adjusted further. There should be a spot for it in organized groups but in its current state it is far better than any other jewelry trait. Just a slight adjustment to synergies or harmony it self would be sufficient enough. My suggestion for the harmony trait would be to bring it down from 20 on gold pieces to 10, most builds that use it are using three at a time. Which still would be a 30% increase to all synergies which is still far better than any other buff or debuffs can give.

Only pay a coffin to a necromancer after a harmony or synergy nerf. You can sprinkle sand first ...

Melzo

MidniteOwl1913 wrote: »

Honestly, I don't care what nerfs happen in PVP as long as it *stays* in PVP. I'm really tired of PVP "balance" being the reason I can't have nice things in PVE.

And I don't know why ZOS can't seem to separate the two, but at this point expecting them to isn't reasonable.

I don't see any reason why you're offended. I've been using the same items and skill mechanics for like three years now. Nerfed dot damage??? So what? Well, wake up to use the spam ability more often. The only thing that could be disputed was the massive dot damage, but even that was changed in time. I've been playing for three years so nothing cardinally has changed. I even go to trials in old sets using all the old skills and pushing the old buttons. I changed 100500+ sets in pvp in three years and only once assembled one assembly for pve, and now I go to it for 2-3 years, I don’t remember ....

Solariken

All excellent suggestions sir.

One caveat I might suggest is that group HOTs like RR and EV should be delineated into 2 effects, the self heal and the ally heal, such that you can only have ONE from yourself and ONE from an ally on you at any given time.

dcmgti

React,

My original thought regarding health was that a reduction in damage could scale with your health. The more I think about it maybe it shouldn't be dynamic scaling because I'm not sure ZOS could even do that. I like what someone mentioned about roles that would cap hp and impose drawbacks per role. Tanks can have whatever health they want at a 20% damage output reduction, healers maybe should have some kind of cost increase? Damage taken increase? They are usually the toughest to burst because of the sheer amount of healing output. DPS role imposes a resist cap and hp cap maybe?

For radiating regen, I think the skill itself is fine. It is an important skill in other parts of the game. Neither pve or pvp should have to suffer consequences for something overperforming on the opposite side. I think healing skills in general should be scaled a little more into max resources? This alone would bring down health pools. That includes Vigor/RR/HTD/Coag.

I don't think its too much to ask Battlespirit to impose that only two HoTs can be active on any player at one time. But should it also include the few HoT sets?

Undeath. It really is the only benefit to having vamp skill like. Says a lot about the skill line. Could use an adjustment so that players actually have to think if they want it or not and it not just defaulting onto every pvp toon.

Ball groups. Yes treaders need an adjustment or a bigger drawback. I know organized groups use a lot more skills/sets to accomplish their goals but these offer little counterplay with so many ways to achieve speed without sprinting. Maybe the drawback should be "reduces effectiveness of this item per group member"?

Warden's minor toughness. I think this is fine and would like to see it stay. If hp was capped or roles implemnted then its a non issue. It's a nice part of class identity, which ZOS seems to be slowly stripping away. My stamden doubles as a trial tank and its a really nice passive in HM content.

CP. I think the slottables are currently fine. In fact I think the nerfing of the damage cp is one factor that has contributed to the tanky meta we are in. The healing slottables are fine, if healing in pvp needs to be nerfed more it should be done in Battlespirit in my opinion.

I would like to add that I think CC immunity should be re-evaluated, especially with the current performance. By the time the game has registered that you broke free you are immediately CC'd again. The entire cooldown is taken by lag. I believe this has also contributed to tankier builds.

I think the meta we are in is combination of broken sets going back to PB/DC release, ballgroups or even 3-4 person "mini ballgroups"(not smallscale anymore), gankers and overall behavior. Now 10 people won't hesitate to ult dump a guy standing on a resource for a cyro daily quest. Gankers are more prevalent than they've ever been, yes there are great players that play on nightblade and fight people straight up. But the vast majority only gank and half of those are people sitting in stealth pressing snipe. People die to it, they want to tank up.

There's also a few really broken sets but that's a discussion for another day, those won't be changed any time soon.

Sorry its long winded lol. Overall, many players agree that things should change.

The_Lex

dcmgti wrote: »

React,

Gankers are more prevalent than they've ever been, yes there are great players that play on nightblade and fight people straight up. But the vast majority only gank and half of those are people sitting in stealth pressing snipe.

Not sure if we’re in the same Cyrodiil, but as one who does his fair share of ganking, I must strongly disagree with the sentiment that “gankers are more prevalent than they’ve ever been.” If you were talking about the Oakensoul, Caluurion’s era, then I would agree. That was a brain-dead, no thumbs meta for ganking. It takes far more skill this patch to pull off a successful gank. The higher the skill requirement, the less players will do it. This has played out in Cyrodiil in the current meta, from my perspective. Many who “gank” nowadays, are pretty bad at it.

Attacking from stealth =/= ganking

dcmgti

The_Lex wrote: »

dcmgti wrote: »

React,

Gankers are more prevalent than they've ever been, yes there are great players that play on nightblade and fight people straight up. But the vast majority only gank and half of those are people sitting in stealth pressing snipe.

Not sure if we’re in the same Cyrodiil, but as one who does his fair share of ganking, I must strongly disagree with the sentiment that “gankers are more prevalent than they’ve ever been.” If you were talking about the Oakensoul, Caluurion’s era, then I would agree. That was a brain-dead, no thumbs meta for ganking. It takes far more skill this patch to pull off a successful gank. The higher the skill requirement, the less players will do it. This has played out in Cyrodiil in the current meta, from my perspective. Many who “gank” nowadays, are pretty bad at it.

Attacking from stealth =/= ganking

Fair enough. When I think about it i don't think I've been melee ganked that much, but I see way more stealth snipe players than I have in a really long time. And most bow gankers aren't successfully killing you by themselves, but if you are fighting someone they have no problem putting a couple of snipes in you with scavenging maw proc. But I just feel like they are way more common than before the oakensoul plague. Still the point remains, being constantly sniped from stealth will eventually make players want to be tankier. More health, more resists, more healing. And yes, Oakensoul in general caused a lot of thumblessness.

To be fair, I've never tried ganking so I will take your word for it if you say its more difficult than it has been.

React

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO wrote: »

In general these are good suggestions, the ground hot limitations is something which I don't think zos can implement due to the way the game is designed but equally it's the least important because you can just negate the ground hots. Theres also the problem of the game needing to calculate the 'most powerful' hot to apply and then overwriting or applying to someone who doesn't have it already etc.

I also personally think the high hp issue is actually better fixed by splitting damage and healing between spell/weapon DMG and stamina/magicka. So that damage is only affected by max s/w damage and healing is only affected by max mag/stam. The reason people stack health (especially in groups), aside from the fact it gives you more reaction time and resistance to burst, is that losing max stam and magicka doesnt really impact your effectiveness when it comes to healing or damage. A cap would be fine but then why not just go back to softcaps in general for all stats (which was a far better system imo). Also health is far easier to stack due to the uneven scaling it has.

The snow treaders change honestly would likely just make groups use other mythics, 4s isn't really worth it when it's the same as other skills which give some more benefit to casting. Think this one needs a bit more thought.

Thanks for the feedback. I can't see the calculations related to determining the highest version of a specific hot being greater than 6x of that hot ticking on 12 people simultaneously, and I don't think that would be a concern.

A lot of people have suggest that the equation for damage/healing be more evenly split between max stats & WD/SD. While I do think this is a good idea, and agree it would help with the max HP, I truly don't think zenimax can currently implement a system like that without breaking the game. I think something like that could be possible on a longer timeline with more time to balance and test it, but we need immediate/easy to implement changes to combat the current problems in the game.

Your point about the snow treaders is exactly the reason I made that suggestion - ball groups should be forced out of them. Even if they gain a small amount of damage & mitigation through markyn, or more stats through DDF, the ability to counterplay them with roots and snares will be far more impactful than any stat gain they would see.

As far as using the new version of that mythic outside of a ballgroup - I think it provides a unique mobility option for classes that don't have access to a good snare immunity or lack barspace, without totally crippling their mobility like the current version of snow treaders does when you don't have a group to provide every expedition buff in the game.

MidniteOwl1913 wrote: »

Honestly, I don't care what nerfs happen in PVP as long as it *stays* in PVP. I'm really tired of PVP "balance" being the reason I can't have nice things in PVE.

And I don't know why ZOS can't seem to separate the two, but at this point expecting them to isn't reasonable.

Everyone on both sides of the game has been asking for this for years. I truly wish they would do this, but agree it is unlikely that they will.

The bright side is that the things I have suggested in this post have little to no effect on PVE at all. The only things that would actually be noticed at all are the very minor 5% evasion nerf, the warden minor toughness nerf, and the healing CP node 4% reduction. None of these would change the meta in PVE at all.

MidniteOwl1913

Melzo wrote: »

MidniteOwl1913 wrote: »

Honestly, I don't care what nerfs happen in PVP as long as it *stays* in PVP. I'm really tired of PVP "balance" being the reason I can't have nice things in PVE.

And I don't know why ZOS can't seem to separate the two, but at this point expecting them to isn't reasonable.

I don't see any reason why you're offended. I've been using the same items and skill mechanics for like three years now. Nerfed dot damage??? So what? Well, wake up to use the spam ability more often. The only thing that could be disputed was the massive dot damage, but even that was changed in time. I've been playing for three years so nothing cardinally has changed. I even go to trials in old sets using all the old skills and pushing the old buttons. I changed 100500+ sets in pvp in three years and only once assembled one assembly for pve, and now I go to it for 2-3 years, I don’t remember ....

I'm not offended, I don't know what you would even think that. As I said, I'm tired of it, nothing more. The 40% nerf to radiating regeneration is something I can adapt to but why should I have to? There is still the same amount of complaints about overhealing in PVP. It made healing in PVE harder and accomplished nothing.

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO

React wrote: »

Thanks for the feedback. I can't see the calculations related to determining the highest version of a specific hot being greater than 6x of that hot ticking on 12 people simultaneously, and I don't think that would be a concern.

A lot of people have suggest that the equation for damage/healing be more evenly split between max stats & WD/SD. While I do think this is a good idea, and agree it would help with the max HP, I truly don't think zenimax can currently implement a system like that without breaking the game. I think something like that could be possible on a longer timeline with more time to balance and test it, but we need immediate/easy to implement changes to combat the current problems in the game.

Your point about the snow treaders is exactly the reason I made that suggestion - ball groups should be forced out of them. Even if they gain a small amount of damage & mitigation through markyn, or more stats through DDF, the ability to counterplay them with roots and snares will be far more impactful than any stat gain they would see.

As far as using the new version of that mythic outside of a ballgroup - I think it provides a unique mobility option for classes that don't have access to a good snare immunity or lack barspace, without totally crippling their mobility like the current version of snow treaders does when you don't have a group to provide every expedition buff in the game.

If you introduce a health cap then groups will just shift to other survival methods (e.g. armour or dmg reduction based). So without targeting the root issues there wont ever really be a reliable solution outside of general softcaps to everything. It might be worth considering the scaling of dmg mitigation and armour if you are trying to scale down health in your suggestion.

Personally I think it would likely be better to keep treaders as they are in terms of root and snare immunity but instead of disabling sprint, disable benefiting from movement speed increases outside of sprint. Also ZOS should just completely remove the free movement speed from red CP. The game can't handle high movement speeds when it comes to hit registration at the best of times. I really don't know why it was added.

Before treaders groups managed fine with movement skills (the only issue was actually skill delay and performance related - roots and snares contributed more to 'rollback' issues.) So I think the 'forced out of them' is a little self defeating but it might harm some less experienced groups.

Also it's really important to remember that huge population decline in PVP has resulted from every nerf to casual group gameplay but only boredom /poor game performance really reduces high end group population. Making it 'harder' to play as a group will result in more population lost from the casual community (if there's much more population to lose from those areas).

xylena_lazarow

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO wrote: »

Making it 'harder' to play as a group will result in more population lost from the casual community (if there's much more population to lose from those areas).

The power gap between premades and randoms is out of control. What can be done?

Sergykid

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO wrote: »

Making it 'harder' to play as a group will result in more population lost from the casual community (if there's much more population to lose from those areas).

The power gap between premades and randoms is out of control. What can be done?

premades only queue, 2v2 or 3v3 arenas, matchmaking

Hotdog_23

Don’t PVP a lot and now mostly just BG’s so my thoughts are surely not great so what take anything I say knowing my recent personal knowledge is limited.

That said I have always felt the undead passive as too strong as well. Don’t think that your suggestion would decrease it’s as much as you would think it you get fully mitigation at 30%. If anything I would think it more mandatory/stronger then it is now. Honestly I believe 10% mitigation is all it should provide and be available at 20%. Why not remove the undead passive from vampire and move it to a guild passive instead, but also a lot of the penalties for being a vampire need to be reduced or limited with undeath removed.

Snow treaders, why not have the benefit work like Pale order ring does where the more people that wear it the more ineffective it becomes too useless.

Stay safe

React

Hotdog_23 wrote: »

Don’t PVP a lot and now mostly just BG’s so my thoughts are surely not great so what take anything I say knowing my recent personal knowledge is limited.

That said I have always felt the undead passive as too strong as well. Don’t think that your suggestion would decrease it’s as much as you would think it you get fully mitigation at 30%. If anything I would think it more mandatory/stronger then it is now. Honestly I believe 10% mitigation is all it should provide and be available at 20%. Why not remove the undead passive from vampire and move it to a guild passive instead, but also a lot of the penalties for being a vampire need to be reduced or limited with undeath removed.

Snow treaders, why not have the benefit work like Pale order ring does where the more people that wear it the more ineffective it becomes too useless.

Stay safe

My suggestion is the mitigation be reduced to 20%, the activation threshold be lowered to 30% HP, and that the mitigation becomes fully active once you pass 30% HP.

On live, undeath activates at 99% HP. At approximately 50% HP, you have 15% undeath mitigation. 40% = 18% mit, 30% = 21% mit, 20% = 24% mit, 10% = 27% mit, 1% = 30% mit (approximately, by my understanding).

So with my suggestion, undeath would be nerfed across the entire board. You would lose the ridiculous high HP mitigation, and once you pass the new activation threshold you would be gaining less mitigation than you'd get with 30% HP using the live version of undeath. I think this is a totally reasonable adjustment to the strength of this ability, that would keep it as a viable source of "emergency" mitigation rather than a ridiculously strong passive mitigation buff that you get at all times.

The idea of snow treaders losing their effectiveness per group member is interesting, but how could that work with roots? Simply losing snare reduction effectiveness wouldn't be adequate, because 12 man groups can stack high movespeed buffs to counteract any snares that would be applied to them. Roots are the true counterplay that could allow you to split up and bog down a 12 man group, while also requiring the members of that group to acknowledge that part of the combat system (i.e forcing them to use snare immunities, dodge rolls, purges, etc).

Currently, members of these sorts of groups are ignoring half of the combat mechanics in the game, which to me seems exploitative.

React

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO wrote: »

If you introduce a health cap then groups will just shift to other survival methods (e.g. armour or dmg reduction based). So without targeting the root issues there wont ever really be a reliable solution outside of general softcaps to everything. It might be worth considering the scaling of dmg mitigation and armour if you are trying to scale down health in your suggestion.

I don't think a health cap will be implemented. While I do think it would be the ideal solution, I do not think zenimax would be willing to take this route. I do however think that if the majority of things I suggested in this post were enacted, whatever health or mitigation ball groups chose to build into would be fine. The fact is, for a myriad of reasons, 12 man groups have never been as untouchable as they are right now.

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO wrote: »

Personally I think it would likely be better to keep treaders as they are in terms of root and snare immunity but instead of disabling sprint, disable benefiting from movement speed increases outside of sprint. Also ZOS should just completely remove the free movement speed from red CP. The game can't handle high movement speeds when it comes to hit registration at the best of times. I really don't know why it was added.

The point of adjusting the treaders is to add counterplay to these groups - primarily in the form of roots. Currently these groups are ignoring half of the combat mechanics in the game, such as needing to use snare immunities/rolls/purges to break roots, having to actively worry about incoming damage, etc. With the primary counter to this playstyle being splitting a group like this up, snow treaders are a huge part of the reason they are currently so difficult to combat.

Celerity absolutley should not be removed. It is such a valuable red cp for so many builds, despite being far less stat dense than the alternative red CPs. "Target out of range" has been an issue for years, and has only grown worse as the game's actual location desync has increased. If the location desync cannot be fixed, they should instead look into adjusting the range of melee abilities rather than nerfing movespeed - i.e, 5 meter abilities should be globally buffed to 6-7 meters. You'll notice playing dragonknight that because of the 2 meter range buff passive, the "target out of range" bug is almost non-existent.

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO wrote: »

Before treaders groups managed fine with movement skills (the only issue was actually skill delay and performance related - roots and snares contributed more to 'rollback' issues.) So I think the 'forced out of them' is a little self defeating but it might harm some less experienced groups.

Good. Then it should be no problem for you to adjust. Getting to ignore an entire aspect of the combat system (roots and snares + root and snare immunities/cleanses) would be fine if there was an actual drawback, but the drawback of the snow treaders is completely nullified by the mobility buffs in a 12 man. Additionally, not having to sprint allows these groups to press far more abilities per minute and benefits their stamina sustain greatly. The point about less experienced groups is fine - on PC NA, we have reached a point where 90% of 12 man groups in cyrodiil have realized that adapting even a very basic version of this playstyle allows them to be nigh unstoppable. There needs to be adequate counterplay to them.

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO wrote: »

Also it's really important to remember that huge population decline in PVP has resulted from every nerf to casual group gameplay but only boredom /poor game performance really reduces high end group population. Making it 'harder' to play as a group will result in more population lost from the casual community (if there's much more population to lose from those areas).

I completley disagree. I am a solo and small scale player, and within that community I know that absolutely everyone is tired of the overwhelming presence of these unstoppable 12 man groups. Every single keep fight, every scroll that gets taken, every bridge battle, these groups are present. You cannot find good fights as a player like me because of this.

Additionally, the "pug" groups, or the few uncoordinated alliance objective focused players are sick of these groups too. There are constant complaints in the zone chats of every faction about these groups. No one enjoys fighting them. No one enjoys the fact that they can stack on objectives and flip them while being unkillable.

I absolutely do not believe that adding counterplay to these groups will hurt the population in PVP. If anything, it would encourage players like me to try and fight them, and would allow the uncoordinated groups/zergs in cyrodiil to actually be able to fight back against them.

Tommy_The_Gun

Regarding high health pools in PvP - for the most part players build to adapt to the current meta. If average dmg goes up - then naturally players build to be more tanky. Things do not happen in a vacuum and one thing affects the other. If damage goes up - then players build for higher survivability to compensate. Especially if the game works how it works and you can not reliably use skills / potions etc because of lag.

Right now, I would guess you see higher health pools because we have "Corrosive" meta. If an armour (no matter what value it has) can be ignored, then it is pointless to invest in. So players tend to go for high health pools + higher healing.

I guess it can be all best summed up by saying:
You can not have fun, if you are dead.

If you want to just lower the survivability without lowering damage, then what will end up happening is that we will have "high damage meta".

^ It happened a couple of times in ESO history and the end result was that players were dying too fast. You had less players overall playing PvP and it was kinda rare to see stuff happening on the map. Sieges for example were lasting for a very short time as even with camps. What ended up happening is that players for the most part were doing PvDoor stuff, even to the greater scale than nowadays.

React

Tommy_The_Gun wrote: »

Regarding high health pools in PvP - for the most part players build to adapt to the current meta. If average dmg goes up - then naturally players build to be more tanky. Things do not happen in a vacuum and one thing affects the other. If damage goes up - then players build for higher survivability to compensate. Especially if the game works how it works and you can not reliably use skills / potions etc because of lag.

Right now, I would guess you see higher health pools because we have "Corrosive" meta. If an armour (no matter what value it has) can be ignored, then it is pointless to invest in. So players tend to go for high health pools + higher healing.

I guess it can be all best summed up by saying:
You can not have fun, if you are dead.

If you want to just lower the survivability without lowering damage, then what will end up happening is that we will have "high damage meta".

^ It happened a couple of times in ESO history and the end result was that players were dying too fast. You had less players overall playing PvP and it was kinda rare to see stuff happening on the map. Sieges for example were lasting for a very short time as even with camps. What ended up happening is that players for the most part were doing PvDoor stuff, even to the greater scale than nowadays.

While I agree that "nothing happens in a vacuum" in regards to the correlation between damage and healing, I do not agree that the current tank meta is a result of player's response to "higher damage". In the past few patches, all we've seen is damage going down (weaving nerfs, dot nerfs, cp node nerfs) while mitigation has remained more or less the same, or even increased in the case of vigor receiving resolve, rallying cry + maras being introduced, etc.

In our current meta, the healing/mit/high HP vastly outweighs what player sourced damage is capable of in most scenarios. This is evident when it is extremely easy for players to simply facetank you while barely doing anything other than rotating a few defensive abilities, regardless of how much offense you run.

I disagree that corrosive armor is the cause of this, as well. I actually felt like it needed a nerf several patches ago when DK was at it's peak, but now I find corrosive almost a non factor. There are very few scenarios where I feel like I can't survive a DK using corrosive against me, because again if you don't fight back and just rotate defensive abilities, you basically cannot die regardless of how much offense your opponent has.

jaysins

All good suggestions though with how balance changes have gone in the past I hope they prioritize the worst offenders as I think implementing all at once would be too much for the devs. My top four would be:

• Cross healing- It's absolutely ridiculous right now and hopefully is capped.
• Vampire undeath - Exactly as you said, it's so strong and mandatory right now, and combined with how high health it's become a real problem.
• Burst heals - Either reduce the amount they heal, increase the cost, or have them have a small cast time and be interruptable like dark deal.
• Resource cost - It's pretty hard to wear people down and by far the worst offender is perma blocking. I think the best way to do this is to lower the values of attributes and cps that reduce its cost.

Even if just cross healing and the undeath passive, it would make for a significantly better pvp experience and is hopefully the very least they can accomplish. Appreciate the detailed write-up and hopefully the combat team at least considers what you have written.

Melzo

I noticed that players in the main burst damage who do not have a lot of defense win. And those who, on the contrary, invest a lot in it, just do not kill anyone. In general, defensive sets work pretty mediocre, with the exception of the battle cry. Any other defensive set reduces your damage and makes it much harder for you to kill someone. Strong players use a new mythical item and accelerate their damage to the mythical level as well and kill in a couple of seconds. This is especially noticeable in nb, dk and stam warden and templar with his dibile finishing blow and combo from which you can neither dodge nor block. Stable damage goes through the woods. Especially with the recent dot damage nerf and mediocre staves buffing only one type of damage that warden and necromancer suffered from until the warden was given an ice staff.

SkaraMinoc

@React Do you think 16-24k Nightblade crits are balanced? If so, why?

React

Melzo wrote: »

I noticed that players in the main burst damage who do not have a lot of defense win. And those who, on the contrary, invest a lot in it, just do not kill anyone. In general, defensive sets work pretty mediocre, with the exception of the battle cry. Any other defensive set reduces your damage and makes it much harder for you to kill someone. Strong players use a new mythical item and accelerate their damage to the mythical level as well and kill in a couple of seconds. This is especially noticeable in nb, dk and stam warden and templar with his dibile finishing blow and combo from which you can neither dodge nor block. Stable damage goes through the woods. Especially with the recent dot damage nerf and mediocre staves buffing only one type of damage that warden and necromancer suffered from until the warden was given an ice staff.

The meta itself is tanky, due to all the things I listed in the OP. It is because of this that if you choose to run a pure defensive set or multiple defensive blue CP, you won't kill anyone with a real build on. So yes, players wearing full damage do usually win right now, because a player who is not running full damage simply will be unable to kill them.

That being said, players in full damage still can't kill 50% of the people in cyrodiil if those people simply don't fight back, or if they're using a decent build mixed with some of the factors from my OP. It is ridiculously easy to indefinitely survive a full damage player if you aren't trying to kill them as well.

SkaraMinoc wrote: »

@React Do you think 16-24k Nightblade crits are balanced? If so, why?

This thread isn't about class balance. There is far too much imbalance amongst the classes on both ends of the spectrum for me to have gone over it without taking away from the main topic of the post, which is supposed to be the overarching issues that affect everyone.

To answer your question specifically, I assume you are talking about assassin's will with that question. Assasin's Will is fine. It did not receive any damage buffs or changes at all in recent patches. It is a dodgeable, blockable, slow moving projectile with two extremely loud audio queues, a 5 light attack prerequisite, and a minimum travel time (500ms) which guarantees that the target has time to react to it at point blank range.

The reason that assassin's will is hitting harder this patch is because of concealed weapon. Any build that is not using concealed weapon is doing the exact same damage that nightblade has been doing for over a year now. The damage modifier granted by concealed weapon is too high, which is resulting in the numbers that you're referring to.

Concealed weapon could use an adjustment, amongst a few other things in the nightblade toolkit, but assassin's will is totally fine. That ability has more counterplay than almost anything else in the game.

Sergykid

assassin will can be guaranteed hit if u know what u r doing, medium attack on off balance makes it unavoidable.
y'all can't get enough of weak players kills and dislike that they survive better for ur own feeling.

defenses are ok now, players that used to never die now die easier with no apparent changes and damage is higher also again with no apparent changes.

there's no need for nerfs on either defense or damage. This is not csgo and shouldn't be or become just cuz u want fast pew pew and log out.

the problems are targeting, sustain, line of sight, and content (not lack of, but what it provides)

TechMaybeHic

I don't know that it's fine now. Health flickers because hots constantly topping off and I think Maras balm still has a lot to do with it. With Sea serpents and Rallying Cry, you wind up double dipping in 3 sets for healing, offense, and defense. If we want to mention stuff other than just what makes ball groups obnoxious. And now being able to tab target friendlies; you can just run rallying cry with a group without even grouping.

My number one thing that should never have 3ven happened yet goes on and on and is getting worse as people figure out it's not Dark Convergence they're really upset about these days; is Rush of Agony. A mass pull with no tells and does not grant CC immunity? When you see DC and say "[snip] ZOS! I was way outside of that!" It was Rush of Agony more than likely with DC so you get a second pull and AOE bomb from all 5ge players stacked from the 2. Zero counter play when it pulls you right into a ball group bombing with it. And it can go off almost 4 times to every one DC Conveniently 8 seconds each where natural CC immunity will be gone.

[edited for profanity bypass]

React

Sergykid wrote: »

assassin will can be guaranteed hit if u know what u r doing, medium attack on off balance makes it unavoidable.

Yes, this is the only scenario you can land it on a player without them being able to dodge or block it - but they can simply block your medium weaves for the duration of the OB proc. There is obvious counterplay.

Sergykid wrote: »

y'all can't get enough of weak players kills and dislike that they survive better for ur own feeling.

Nope. It is far too easy to survive, for everyone right now. Players can effortlessly survive you even while you're wearing four damage sets, while they're also wearing two damage/sustain oriented 5 pieces. If they wear a defensive set like maras, hist, rallying, Trial by fire, or even just using 3-4 defensive blue CP, you cannot come anywhere near killing them if they simply choose to not take risks, or to not fight back.

Keep in mind, almost every single thing I suggested be nerfed is directly and signifcantly nerfing the builds that I play. Evasion, undeath, combat medic, pains refuge, survival instincts - I use all of these.

Sergykid wrote: »

there's no need for nerfs on either defense or damage. This is not csgo and shouldn't be or become just cuz u want fast pew pew and log out.

Nobody is asking for that. The TTK is far too high and survival vastly outweighs offensive capability for most classes in the game right now. There needs to be adjuatments made.

Sergykid wrote: »

the problems are targeting, sustain, line of sight, and content (not lack of, but what it provides)

Targeting isn't really an issue. Location desync is, but that is likely something that they cannot fix. I've suggested in other posts that they buff the range of all 5 meter range abilities by 1-2 meters to compensate for the location desync.

Sustain is problematic, sure. I've suggested several things in this post that overall will have a signifcant impact on people's sustain.

Line of sight isn't an issue.

Content, sure. I've got several posts suggesting and asking for content/reworks. I don't understand what this has to do with the topic of this post, though.

TechMaybeHic

I really like the idea of extending range from 5m to 6 or 7. My NB is the one I am most annoyed by in lag because I really feel the position desync. Drives me absolutely nuts

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO

React wrote: »

Good. Then it should be no problem for you to adjust. Getting to ignore an entire aspect of the combat system (roots and snares + root and snare immunities/cleanses) would be fine if there was an actual drawback, but the drawback of the snow treaders is completely nullified by the mobility buffs in a 12 man. Additionally, not having to sprint allows these groups to press far more abilities per minute and benefits their stamina sustain greatly. The point about less experienced groups is fine - on PC NA, we have reached a point where 90% of 12 man groups in cyrodiil have realized that adapting even a very basic version of this playstyle allows them to be nigh unstoppable. There needs to be adequate counterplay to them.

That's why I was suggesting to remove the benefit from additional movement speed e.g. 'rapids' but allow for sprinting. This removes the advantage from Major and Minor Expedition for the benefit of ignoring roots. Overall slowing groups down, making them easier to bomb etc but giving back sprint to allow for stam and engage management.

React wrote: »

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO wrote: »

Also it's really important to remember that huge population decline in PVP has resulted from every nerf to casual group gameplay but only boredom /poor game performance really reduces high end group population. Making it 'harder' to play as a group will result in more population lost from the casual community (if there's much more population to lose from those areas).

I completely disagree. I am a solo and small scale player, and within that community I know that absolutely everyone is tired of the overwhelming presence of these unstoppable 12 man groups. Every single keep fight, every scroll that gets taken, every bridge battle, these groups are present. You cannot find good fights as a player like me because of this.

Additionally, the "pug" groups, or the few uncoordinated alliance objective focused players are sick of these groups too. There are constant complaints in the zone chats of every faction about these groups. No one enjoys fighting them. No one enjoys the fact that they can stack on objectives and flip them while being unkillable.

I absolutely do not believe that adding counterplay to these groups will hurt the population in PVP. If anything, it would encourage players like me to try and fight them, and would allow the uncoordinated groups/zergs in cyrodiil to actually be able to fight back against them.

&

React wrote: »

The fact is, for a myriad of reasons, 12 man groups have never been as untouchable as they are right now.

The main reason groups are 'unkillable' is because there isn't a competent population remaining to actually kill/disrupt them. Along with very few groups left to compete in any way. This in combination with balance specifically making it easier, as I said previously I agree with many of your changes and some of them would actually maybe make it interesting enough for me to return to playing, means that you see these groups at 'all the fights' because there's now only enough players for 1-2 fight(s) on the map at a time. Back a few years ago you had 2-3 24m groups in combination with maybe 1-2 12m's on each faction fighting on certain nights along with a good 20-30 pugs meaning there was way more action all over and fights could be found in many different keeps.

(and the reason why we don't have these numbers any more is because 'groups' have been systematically nerfed over the years making it harder and harder for these more casual but still a little capable groups to run. Yet makes it easier for groups who optimise because of all the potential benefits for coordination).

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO wrote: »

Making it 'harder' to play as a group will result in more population lost from the casual community (if there's much more population to lose from those areas).

The power gap between premades and randoms is out of control. What can be done?

@xylena_lazarow
I've not played for a while but at least some things here would likely help:
Remove earthgore, plaguebreak (at least the on death explosion) & review all pull sets.
Implement softcaps to stats (hp, mag, stam, wep dmg and sp dmg).
Increase group cap to 16 or 24.
Fix negate so that it can be countered (I assume this hasn't been fixed yet).
Adjust snow treaders,
Adjust some cp (suggestions here are reasonable, I would still nerf the speed star too)
Revert the healing springs vs HoT healing changes (so that non burst healing can be countered via negate).

Now to encourage back the population:
Most of these suggestions -