Mayhem event high level guidance / advice

Crown · May 2023

A new guide was posted yesterday: https://darkelves.com/mayhem/

Additions / comments / suggestions / complaints / cat pictures can be sent on Discord (or in this thread, but I don't watch the forums much anymore).

DrNukenstein · May 2023

-I'd recommend sustain+health food over stat pool+health food, especially for new pvpers. Jewels of Misrule is the best bang for buck today
-35k health on most builds is overkill. 30k is the benchmark.
-If an ability gives a healing morph and a damage morph, switch to the healing morph if you intend to use it
-If you are new to pvp and are in a group, stay towards the middle so you don't get picked off
-Replace crit chance sources with penetration, weapon damage, or crit damage when it's easy to do so
-Run 2 swift jewels, it's a big difference for mobility and relatively small drop in damage
-replace buff skills that require you to use them on a target (FG trap), with buffs that are cast directly on self (Race against time, the best skill in the game)

Crown · February 20

Bumping this up for the Mayhem event starting tomorrow. The guide has been updated.

DrNukenstein's advice above (in its May 2023 version - unedited) is reasonable for many too.

Tommy_The_Gun · February 20

One thing I would advice to every one new to Imperial City is to BANK all of your Tel-Var stones before going to Imperial City.

The reason for that is quite obvious (but players new to the IC may not know that). Tel-Var is a currency that you will lose if you will be killed by other Player in Imperial City. The player who gets the kill gets some % of Tel-Var you have and you lose half of what you carry or something like this. So, if you got a lot of Tel-Var stones from login rewards - better bank them so you would not lose them.

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO · February 21

There's a fair bit of advice there which is no longer relevant. You might actually need to update it.

For example:

"Don’t purge. Take the skill off your bar. If you’re a Templar, don’t run Ritual. If you’re a Warden, don’t run netch. If you’re a healer, don’t run the Curse Eater or Stendarr sets (both only work in your group), and don’t run the blue CP that removes negative effects on low health targets. If you don’t follow this advice, you will be responsible for killing (a lot of) players on your own faction due to the Plaguebreak set as it causes area damage when purged."

Purging is actually very good for solo play especially when zerg surfing as siege can really hurt individual players but purge won't affect them negatively.

"Don’t block for more than 2 seconds. You’ll be tempted to block all damage, but that will just drain your stamina and you will likely die a few seconds later. Rather than blocking, learn to roll dodge instead taking you outside of damage areas and causing attacking players to miss. If you’re near-full on stamina, which you should be most of the time in 5 medium, you should be able to roll a LOT (wait for the rolling counter cool-down to be over so they don’t cost more if you can). You will see some players permanently blocking – those are specific niche builds meant to just.. stand there and block. They don’t do much other than sometimes burn siege, and they’re not worth your time. You can ignore those players and they won’t be able to do anything other than.. stand there and hold block. In PvE, there are taunt skills that work. In PvP, these players rely on your team mates being uneducated (or stupid), so they waste a minute or two killing the one tank target rather than killing 50+ other targets in the same time. Don’t waste time killing tanks (unless you’re firing meat bags and cold fire siege on them – which will often kill them)."
Blocking and block timing is actually super important, far more so than dodge roll, and the only defence against 'ball groups' and 'bombers' to prevent yourself from being pulled in.

People following this advice will be easy pray to such groups.

Minnesinger · February 21

Despite these pro advices to become a pvp player overnight there will be tens of 20k health paper wearing bomber casualties standing on a resource/ keep flag.

Crown · February 21

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO wrote: »

There's a fair bit of advice there which is no longer relevant. You might actually need to update it.

Good points - TY. Updated the purge and block paragraphs for context.

Stridig · February 24

None of the stuff in this thread matters. Ballgroups make it so nobody can truly participate in the event unless they walk everywhere. Ballgroups know about the stuck in combat bug. They know anybody who encounters them will be stuck in combat. They don't care. ZOS won't fix it so the experience will be horrible for those trying to have fun.

FlopsyPrince · February 24

Standing in the middle can be very risky when bombers come by or damage comes from above.

Crown · March 2

Stridig wrote: »

None of the stuff in this thread matters. Ballgroups make it so nobody can truly participate in the event unless they walk everywhere. Ballgroups know about the stuck in combat bug. They know anybody who encounters them will be stuck in combat. They don't care. ZOS won't fix it so the experience will be horrible for those trying to have fun.

The combat bug applies to everyone, it has for years, and it probably will for years to come. Thinking that ball groups are exploiting something to keep you in combat is rather ridiculous. They could say the same about solos.. Do you know that for a ball group to run down a solo it's usually not worth the AP? The reason they do is because until you solos who have damaged them die, they will also be stuck in combat. The combat bug affects groups more than anyone, as one person can keep another 12 unable to mount and get anywhere they need to be on the map.

Gizit · March 2

Good work on this Crown.

Stridig · March 2

Crown wrote: »

Stridig wrote: »

None of the stuff in this thread matters. Ballgroups make it so nobody can truly participate in the event unless they walk everywhere. Ballgroups know about the stuck in combat bug. They know anybody who encounters them will be stuck in combat. They don't care. ZOS won't fix it so the experience will be horrible for those trying to have fun.

The combat bug applies to everyone, it has for years, and it probably will for years to come. Thinking that ball groups are exploiting something to keep you in combat is rather ridiculous. They could say the same about solos.. Do you know that for a ball group to run down a solo it's usually not worth the AP? The reason they do is because until you solos who have damaged them die, they will also be stuck in combat. The combat bug affects groups more than anyone, as one person can keep another 12 unable to mount and get anywhere they need to be on the map.

Cool. Never mentioned an exploit nor did I mention anything about being solo. That being said, ballgroups routinely run down solo players. And do ballgroups really get impacted by the stuck in combat bug? Do they really need to mount or slot seige while running around a keep? No they don't. They stack HOT's and ulti dump until people leave or the ballgroup dies. I'm not new.

And I apologize for taking away from the work you put into this. This is very good information and you deserve credit for that.

Crown · March 2

Stridig wrote: »

ballgroups routinely run down solo players. And do ballgroups really get impacted by the stuck in combat bug? Do they really need to mount or slot seige while running around a keep? No they don't. They stack HOT's and ulti dump until people leave or the ballgroup dies

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/643488/zos-plans-concerning-ball-groups is all about ball groups and an interesting(ish) read. You're 100% correct that groups routinely run down solos.. I ball from 7-9pm Mondays and Fridays, and I can say with certainty that unless it's someone that we want to run down because reasons (usually intoxication and it's fun to role play the zerg?) our group will ignore solos and small groups that we know wouldn't be fun to fight. If however, one of them has even light attacked us (they usually do) and we wanted to ride somewhere far away to fight away from the rest of our faction, then we'll run them down as it's less boring than playing the "can I mount yet?" game being stuck in combat for 5 minutes.

RE HoTs, there was some mention in the thread linked above too.. I've been balling since the start of the game, I've led and healed groups through almost every patch. There have been times when HoTs were strong and when they were weak. If HoTs are nerfed (and I think that they should be, something like you can have a max of 2 of the same healing effect on you at a time), it won't affect us much. We've already run test raids where most of the healers only burst and use ground heals, and it was even more fun for the healers as it's more challenging.

Twig_Garlicshine · March 4

Crown wrote: »

Stridig wrote: »

ballgroups routinely run down solo players. And do ballgroups really get impacted by the stuck in combat bug? Do they really need to mount or slot seige while running around a keep? No they don't. They stack HOT's and ulti dump until people leave or the ballgroup dies

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/643488/zos-plans-concerning-ball-groups is all about ball groups and an interesting(ish) read. You're 100% correct that groups routinely run down solos.. I ball from 7-9pm Mondays and Fridays, and I can say with certainty that unless it's someone that we want to run down because reasons (usually intoxication and it's fun to role play the zerg?) our group will ignore solos and small groups that we know wouldn't be fun to fight. If however, one of them has even light attacked us (they usually do) and we wanted to ride somewhere far away to fight away from the rest of our faction, then we'll run them down as it's less boring than playing the "can I mount yet?" game being stuck in combat for 5 minutes.

RE HoTs, there was some mention in the thread linked above too.. I've been balling since the start of the game, I've led and healed groups through almost every patch. There have been times when HoTs were strong and when they were weak. If HoTs are nerfed (and I think that they should be, something like you can have a max of 2 of the same healing effect on you at a time), it won't affect us much. We've already run test raids where most of the healers only burst and use ground heals, and it was even more fun for the healers as it's more challenging.

If only more Ballers were like you and wanted more challenging and fun gameplay.