Can we please talk about Carve??

Danse_Mayhem

It’s so much worse in this pvp event, it even before this… The brain dead carve builds with master 2H and corrosive just one button mashing their way through hordes of people with basically no weakness.

Honestly I’m not interested in a solo players take on this - When I’m solo, this BS is obviously not an issue. But even to the smallest group, this strat can be deadly and can basically be put on a tank.

Paired with dark convergence or rushing agony, and a bit of lag to prevent the blocking of these things, carve (an AOE spammable which gives a self shield) can hit for 20k on players… How is this not a clear issue?

Please ZOS look into toning this master 2H down. PvP has become the same handful of cheese builds recently ;
- Lightning heavy attack builds
- Carve spam with a pull set
Are the main 2. Heavy attack is getting toned down soon which is a great change and something almost every pvper who cares about balance wanted, but the carve meta needs looking at too please

LukosCreyden

Lovely. Another nerf thread. You know, if this gets nerfed it'll probably hurt pve builds too? It won't affect pvp either, as people will just jump straight to the next OP thing and everyone will complain about that instead. Pvp is never gonna be balanced and nerfing stuff because of pvp just frustrates everone and makes people afraid of combat updates in the patch notes lol.

Janni

Please do try this yourself and see how it goes. Catch more than 2 people with that skill is incredibly difficult. Frankly if people were stacking that close there were a dozen other things that would surely have blown them up if it hadn't been carve and they you'd be here complaining about that set/skill/class.

In all sincerity it's ok. You had a bad sense of judgement for a brief second, you and several others around you didn't maintain a good sense of situational awareness, and a keen opponent with a setup specifically designed for this exact situation made a snap decision and succeeded. It happens to all of us. And there's no reason to remove everything fun in the game just because of that. Relax and have some fun.

Danse_Mayhem

To address both points there - The skill is fine. The master weapon modifier is insane and is outperforming everything else atm. A change to the master weapon wouldn’t screw PVE at all.

It’s also not a brief second at all. This has been going on for a while - People have slowly been catching on and now it’s -everywhere- making up the majority of builds in pvp.

I’m not a brand new player who’s been killed one time by this. I’m a release player with grand overlord on 2 servers and more emps than I can count - so I’ve spent my fair share of time in pvp and seen many annoying metas, and I feel it justified to talk about every one of them that plays out this way.

Honestly, if dark convergence and rushing agony were changed, that would help. Those pull sets are a terrible addition to pvp.
If plaguevreak / Vicious death wasn’t a thing either? Also not too much of an issue.
However those things aren’t going anywhere anytime soon it seems, so we are stuck in a pvp meta where you no longer need to coordinate ultimates and positioning for a group ultimates dump, and instead can just rely on these sets to do all of that work for you.
It’s not an issue of having a Zerg stood on a pinhead, it’s an issue of not even being able to have 4 people on a ram without getting one shot by these broken combos.
Build diversity is at an all time low - So I’m looking at this from an experienced, and objective point of view to the overall balance of pvp, and not a single bad experience.

Janni

So your solution is not to address the problems that we all know and complain about but to instead remove something that you admit isn't even the source and by all accounts really isn't even that big of an issue?

IncultaWolf

I just think it's amusing that dragonknight can bomb better than nightblade now, that class is so cracked. It's honestly just corrosive that needs to be looked at. Magma shell should give the mitigation and corrosive should only give the penetration, not the damage reduction as well.

Danse_Mayhem

I have addressed the ‘problems’ on multiple threads, but the jUsT bLoCk iT brigade comes out in force when Dark convergence is questioned and those pull sets just aren’t going anywhere obviously, and that doesn’t change that carve builds are still able to wreck whole crowds with just one button.

Also agree completely about corrosive. Honestly if the pull sets were looked at, and corrosive for the DKs doing it, then the master 2H wouldn’t be a huge issue. But those things have been talked about to death and aren’t changing, so I don’t think it’s unreasonable to look at the master 2H as it’s part of it.

Vetixio

Sure Carve/Brawler can hurt with the Master 2H and I have rarely seen the skill used before this event but its still Dark Convergence and Plaguebreak that are the problems in PvP doing all the work for people. With a lot of Convergences going off many have crashed or experienced a lot of lag, they should just delete those 2 sets PvP was way more fun before they existed.

BalticBlues

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

Necromancers being used as a "bomb" class was outside of the intended scope of play and created a unhealthy play environment.

While Necromancers are dead as bombers now,
the "Carve DK" now is bombing groups in PvP left and right.
This also is "outside of the intended scope of play and creates a unhealthy play environment".

DK bombing is worse than any NB and Necro bombing ever was. There almost is no counterplay.
DKs Ulti "Corrosive Armor" was designed when DK did not have much DPS, but
now with High DPS and ProcSets (Plaguebreak, DC), DKs are BOMBERS OF MASS DESTRUCTION.

Vetixio wrote: »

its still Dark Convergence and Plaguebreak that are the problems in PvP doing all the work for people.

Agreed. The Combination of "Corrosive Armor" with these ProcSets is the core of the problem.

Dojohoda

Disable all aoe pulls in PVP.

LukosCreyden

Dark Convergence? Yup, I think most logical minds can agree that this ridiculous set is the problem lol. Seems like 95% of pvp's problems come back to either classic bugs and lag, or this damn set lol. Often a combination of both.

Danse_Mayhem

I’m not usually one to bash ZOS, but honestly on the topic of dark convergence, there was an overwhelming amount of feedback during the PTS for that for it to NOT go live, and it was totally ignored.
I’ll take a nerf to any part of these combos tbh. Dark con, rushing agony and plague break would be preferred, but if they are staying as they are then nerf something to stop this endless cheese IMO.

Rhaegar75

Arena weapons both 2H and DW are over performing same as the good old ‘merciless charge’ builds ages ago.

The skills themselves are absolutely fine. They need to tune down the weapons

NordSwordnBoard

Sets with overloaded bonuses that do so much more than others combine with the most densely pact ultimate to make pushing one button repeatedly effective instead of comical.

xDeusEJRx

It's obvious this is what it would devolve into some point. That's what happens when you use proc sets to try to fix problems in the game.

These sets that make this combo possible were all meant as a way to tackle overwhelming zerg PVP, but instead of actually doing something to nerf a zerg like making taking away healing power by getting rid of cross healing that keeps alive people who would otherwise die in battle, we just create a bigger and stronger procs to kill people with.

I've always subscribed to the idea that procs have greatly devolved pvp and trivialized the hell out of fighting in this game, and every year we get more of these procs that just trivialize combat. Now it's just equip the strongest zerg buster combination and pvp is easy.

This is what happens when you use a bandaid fix to a long-term problem. The wound just grows instead of healing.

Marcus684

If this build is overperforming, then the only way to get it nerfed is for everyone to jump on the train and all abuse it. Overuse of a skill or gear set is one of the most often cited reasons for ZOS nerfing something.

TBH I haven't noticed this in my death recap, instead mostly seeing Dark Convergence, Occult Overload and Plaguebreak, and wasn't aware that it was even a thing. Guess it's time to cash in some transmute stones.

AuraNebula

xDeusEJRx wrote: »

It's obvious this is what it would devolve into some point. That's what happens when you use proc sets to try to fix problems in the game.

These sets that make this combo possible were all meant as a way to tackle overwhelming zerg PVP, but instead of actually doing something to nerf a zerg like making taking away healing power by getting rid of cross healing that keeps alive people who would otherwise die in battle, we just create a bigger and stronger procs to kill people with.

I've always subscribed to the idea that procs have greatly devolved pvp and trivialized the hell out of fighting in this game, and every year we get more of these procs that just trivialize combat. Now it's just equip the strongest zerg buster combination and pvp is easy.

This is what happens when you use a bandaid fix to a long-term problem. The wound just grows instead of healing.

I agree to an extent. When they took away cross healing it only made zergs, small groups, large groups, and ball groups stronger and harder to kill. Ask anyone who ran in a ball group, they would love for cross healing to be turned off again.

Besides that I agree with all your points. They introduced these sets after they buffed bombers to that stupid level where they were one-shotting everyone. Then they nerfed them into the ground and tried to introduce these sets to offset that nerf.

They never should have buffed bombers in the first place. They were in a really good place before they buffed them and helped to manage the mindless zergs running around.

xDeusEJRx

AuraNebula wrote: »

xDeusEJRx wrote: »

It's obvious this is what it would devolve into some point. That's what happens when you use proc sets to try to fix problems in the game.

These sets that make this combo possible were all meant as a way to tackle overwhelming zerg PVP, but instead of actually doing something to nerf a zerg like making taking away healing power by getting rid of cross healing that keeps alive people who would otherwise die in battle, we just create a bigger and stronger procs to kill people with.

I've always subscribed to the idea that procs have greatly devolved pvp and trivialized the hell out of fighting in this game, and every year we get more of these procs that just trivialize combat. Now it's just equip the strongest zerg buster combination and pvp is easy.

This is what happens when you use a bandaid fix to a long-term problem. The wound just grows instead of healing.

I agree to an extent. When they took away cross healing it only made zergs, small groups, large groups, and ball groups stronger and harder to kill. Ask anyone who ran in a ball group, they would love for cross healing to be turned off again.

Besides that I agree with all your points. They introduced these sets after they buffed bombers to that stupid level where they were one-shotting everyone. Then they nerfed them into the ground and tried to introduce these sets to offset that nerf.

They never should have buffed bombers in the first place. They were in a really good place before they buffed them and helped to manage the mindless zergs running around.

I thought no cross healing was fine, it was either join a group or randoms can't save you from being killed. Which I think is fair. Right now if anyone is about to die, you just run into the group sieging the keep and it becomes difficult to kill that player (because cross healing). If you're going to zerg, then do it for real and not just surf the zerg.

It either forces you to group up or accept you're going to die. I think it makes sense to be saved by group member healing, but being saved because you ran into a crowd that you're not even running or keeping up with is kinda cheesy.

Ultimately, the main point I was getting at, they wanted to create counters to zergs, when they could've just easily taken away some power from the zergs, but instead what we get is bigger and better procs every patch as a way to solve issues, which albeit creates even worse issues. Not only that, zos seem to have no intent on stopping it either, so I await the next combination to supersede even this

Rhaegar75

xDeusEJRx wrote: »

AuraNebula wrote: »

xDeusEJRx wrote: »

It's obvious this is what it would devolve into some point. That's what happens when you use proc sets to try to fix problems in the game.

These sets that make this combo possible were all meant as a way to tackle overwhelming zerg PVP, but instead of actually doing something to nerf a zerg like making taking away healing power by getting rid of cross healing that keeps alive people who would otherwise die in battle, we just create a bigger and stronger procs to kill people with.

I've always subscribed to the idea that procs have greatly devolved pvp and trivialized the hell out of fighting in this game, and every year we get more of these procs that just trivialize combat. Now it's just equip the strongest zerg buster combination and pvp is easy.

This is what happens when you use a bandaid fix to a long-term problem. The wound just grows instead of healing.

I agree to an extent. When they took away cross healing it only made zergs, small groups, large groups, and ball groups stronger and harder to kill. Ask anyone who ran in a ball group, they would love for cross healing to be turned off again.

Besides that I agree with all your points. They introduced these sets after they buffed bombers to that stupid level where they were one-shotting everyone. Then they nerfed them into the ground and tried to introduce these sets to offset that nerf.

They never should have buffed bombers in the first place. They were in a really good place before they buffed them and helped to manage the mindless zergs running around.

I thought no cross healing was fine, it was either join a group or randoms can't save you from being killed. Which I think is fair. Right now if anyone is about to die, you just run into the group sieging the keep and it becomes difficult to kill that player (because cross healing). If you're going to zerg, then do it for real and not just surf the zerg.

It either forces you to group up or accept you're going to die. I think it makes sense to be saved by group member healing, but being saved because you ran into a crowd that you're not even running or keeping up with is kinda cheesy.

Ultimately, the main point I was getting at, they wanted to create counters to zergs, when they could've just easily taken away some power from the zergs, but instead what we get is bigger and better procs every patch as a way to solve issues, which albeit creates even worse issues. Not only that, zos seem to have no intent on stopping it either, so I await the next combination to supersede even this

Sadly I have to agree with your analysis: bigger and better procs are trivializing PvP. I'm a mediocre PvPer at best and I can shine with the right overturned procs....not a good sign. I definitely second the idea of trying to take something away from the Zerg rather than traying to add some broken to the masses!!

AuraNebula

xDeusEJRx wrote: »

AuraNebula wrote: »

xDeusEJRx wrote: »

It's obvious this is what it would devolve into some point. That's what happens when you use proc sets to try to fix problems in the game.

These sets that make this combo possible were all meant as a way to tackle overwhelming zerg PVP, but instead of actually doing something to nerf a zerg like making taking away healing power by getting rid of cross healing that keeps alive people who would otherwise die in battle, we just create a bigger and stronger procs to kill people with.

I've always subscribed to the idea that procs have greatly devolved pvp and trivialized the hell out of fighting in this game, and every year we get more of these procs that just trivialize combat. Now it's just equip the strongest zerg buster combination and pvp is easy.

This is what happens when you use a bandaid fix to a long-term problem. The wound just grows instead of healing.

I agree to an extent. When they took away cross healing it only made zergs, small groups, large groups, and ball groups stronger and harder to kill. Ask anyone who ran in a ball group, they would love for cross healing to be turned off again.

Besides that I agree with all your points. They introduced these sets after they buffed bombers to that stupid level where they were one-shotting everyone. Then they nerfed them into the ground and tried to introduce these sets to offset that nerf.

They never should have buffed bombers in the first place. They were in a really good place before they buffed them and helped to manage the mindless zergs running around.

I thought no cross healing was fine, it was either join a group or randoms can't save you from being killed. Which I think is fair. Right now if anyone is about to die, you just run into the group sieging the keep and it becomes difficult to kill that player (because cross healing). If you're going to zerg, then do it for real and not just surf the zerg.

It either forces you to group up or accept you're going to die. I think it makes sense to be saved by group member healing, but being saved because you ran into a crowd that you're not even running or keeping up with is kinda cheesy.

Ultimately, the main point I was getting at, they wanted to create counters to zergs, when they could've just easily taken away some power from the zergs, but instead what we get is bigger and better procs every patch as a way to solve issues, which albeit creates even worse issues. Not only that, zos seem to have no intent on stopping it either, so I await the next combination to supersede even this

Yeah I agree with your main point. But no cross healing ended up making zergs stronger. It also hurt healers. You can only have groups of 12 and if you ran a healer and couldn't get a group you were useless. There was no point in hanging around Cyrodiil just healing yourself if you couldn't get a group. I run a healer too and it would be frustrating not being able to heal a member of your alliance just because they weren't in your group. They'll get heals here and there but it definitely doesn't make that big of an impact on solo players because they still aren't focusing their heals unto random players.

I do think healing in general does need a nerf. If anything they should nerf a lot of the self healing skills as well. You shouldn't be able to have insane damage, be tanky, and be able to heal yourself back to full health.

I also agree with your stance on procs as well.

SandandStars

Agree with OP that build diversity is extremely low & the combo he/she mentions is bad for the game.

Any solutions we try to provide here on the forums need to take into account that lag and desync will always be present in PvP.

So, dark convergence/rush a/ pull sets etc. need to be assessed in average laggy conditions, as do abilities/skill combos players use to exploit desync. This is merely a problem I point out— please do not snip or edit my comment for merely mentioning desync, Post Moderator. Thank you.

dinokstrunz

I think master 2h is completely fine. Rushing agony needs a look at for sure, not giving the target cc immunity after the pull is quite busted. Corrosive does too much in my opinion, it makes the other morph of the ultimate worthless, removing the defensive part of corrosive or the ult generation during corrosive would be a step in the right direction. I just feel like corrosive is too good right now imo.

DrNukenstein

I was standing next to someone in a BG and we got masters carved pretty hard. I don't usually clump though, so I don't usually die to it.

I think it's great the game has mechanics that punish clumping. When "stack up" isn't the answer to every problem, gameplay is more engaging IMO

Janni

Again I implore you all to try to make a build that uses Titantic cleave as your main source of dispatching enemies. Don't do it in a highly organized ballgroup wherer 11 others are keeping you alive and providing easy setups. Don't do it with a partner using pull sets as a setup, and don't do it to obvious and easy targets like pvers trying to get achievements during an event while they run around with 20k hp. Do it to a group of experienced pvpers who know how to build and defend themselves. And do it successfully over and over and over. Three dozen failures followed by one success doesn't count.

xFocused

Instead of nerfing DK & Carve, why not buff the other classes? Necro used to hit like a truck with it's dark con/smash bombs and now it's just...weak, at least that's what it feels like. DK Corrosive/Carve or Brawler is the current meta, absolutely, but nerfing it isn't the solution. Buff other classes that can compete with DK's

Marcus684

xFocused wrote: »

Instead of nerfing DK & Carve, why not buff the other classes? Necro used to hit like a truck with it's dark con/smash bombs and now it's just...weak, at least that's what it feels like. DK Corrosive/Carve or Brawler is the current meta, absolutely, but nerfing it isn't the solution. Buff other classes that can compete with DK's

Why on earth on Tamriel would they go to all the trouble to buff every other play style, when nerfing one overperforming set item or skill would give the same result? The trash mobs you face won't care if it takes 1 swing or 2 to wipe them out.

El_Borracho

dinokstrunz wrote: »

I think master 2h is completely fine. Rushing agony needs a look at for sure, not giving the target cc immunity after the pull is quite busted.

Shh, don't let the cat out of the bag. Love that set, especially on a DK with Ferocious Leap and Deep Breath.

I don't run the Dark Convergence/Masters 2H build though. Especially since when I get pulled by Dark Convergence in non-ball group fight, I can usually kill them before the DC goes off or roll out of the circle.

It is not an easy build to overcome, and the best way to beat it is with another DK, and it will likely lead to overuse and an eventual nerf of either a useful skill or weapon. But this does illustrate the issue with PVP, along with the omnipresent Oakensorc one button build. Copycats will lead to changes. But instead of nerfing it, I would like to see ESO try the other route and make others just as strong, if possible

Dojohoda

AOE pulls in PVP are an abomination. AOE pulls do not belong in PVP!

YandereGirlfriend

I'm not sure what the solution is but, yes, there are a TON of (typically very poor) bombers out there trying to cheese this strat.
Most of their bombs fail but when they do hit that glorious 1-in-10 success then it validates the entire playstyle.

For those vehemently defending the current tuning of the Master's 2H, however, ask yourself: what other stat-based Arena set can scale your damage as high as the current Master's 2H?

You get max stacks of, say, Chaotic Whirlwind and your damage increases by maybe 5%. You tag an enemy with the Master's Bow and get even less than that. The Master's Staff gets you perhaps 10%. Sure, those can increase all of your sources of damage, but we are talking about adding low 100s of damage to individual ticks whereas Master's 2H, due to the way that the damage is calculated, immediately begins stapling on thousands.

Which is NOT to say that the current epidemic of these bombers is solely the responsibility of the Master's 2H; rather, it is the confluence of several different imbalanced factors, including: Master's 2H, Corrosive Armor, pull sets, and the GIANT shield that Brawler applies that is wildly out of proportion to any other non-ultimate damage shield in the game.

This is, you might say, a "target rich environment" for choosing what to balance first.

Vaqual

YandereGirlfriend wrote: »

You get max stacks of, say, Chaotic Whirlwind and your damage increases by maybe 5%. You tag an enemy with the Master's Bow and get even less than that. The Master's Staff gets you perhaps 10%. Sure, those can increase all of your sources of damage, but we are talking about adding low 100s of damage to individual ticks whereas Master's 2H, due to the way that the damage is calculated, immediately begins stapling on thousands.

But these are not dedicated AoE sets, that is not a fair comparison. These sets have other benefits, not just raw AoE damage. I think Master's 2h is fine. It is good at doing its job and that's it. What makes it problematic are the pull sets, as it has been pointed out several times in this thread. But they boost any target scaled AoE drastically. That doesn't mean that these sets are too strong, it is just that their conditionality, which is the balancing factor, is negated. The synergy between pull sets and target-scaling AoEs is what is broken. They could just reduce max targets of the pull sets vs Players and this would be an easy fix, without completely gutting valid AoE sets. Because if the enemy is just stacking mindlessly, they derserve to be nuked. This is what sets like those are made for. But when the stacking can be forced by pressing one button, it is admittedly cheesy.

Corrosive is another story. In terms of offense it doesn't add any more than onslaught would. It just allows the DK to get out alive after bombing and maybe going for a second attempt, etc. It is annoying, it is too strong for its cost/cd, but it is not a deciding factor in the bombing itself. Getting in to pull the trigger is entirely possible without the mitigation from corrosive. That should be a separate discussion.

Don't convolute unrelated pain points like this, because this will lead to imprecise and mistargeted balancing attempts.

xDeusEJRx

Janni wrote: »

Again I implore you all to try to make a build that uses Titantic cleave as your main source of dispatching enemies. Don't do it in a highly organized ballgroup wherer 11 others are keeping you alive and providing easy setups. Don't do it with a partner using pull sets as a setup, and don't do it to obvious and easy targets like pvers trying to get achievements during an event while they run around with 20k hp. Do it to a group of experienced pvpers who know how to build and defend themselves. And do it successfully over and over and over. Three dozen failures followed by one success doesn't count.

That type of strat wouldn't work on "experienced pvp'ers" because for 1: Experienced players won't be in the types of groups these sets target to begin with. Zergs.
They are all zerg buster sets, most experienced players aren't running in zergs. They're either ball grouping, small scaling, soloing, or dueling for PVP. So trying to make the argument "try this against experienced players" is very moot.

Point 2: I have no problems with zerg-busting, but I personally hate proc heavy metas, and we've been in a proc heavy meta and all the current top zerg buster setups are proc heavy to the point it becomes exceedingly trivial to zerg wipe with them.
Not to say there's 0 difficulty, but zerg busting or "1vxing" has never been easier than now because these sets make it EXCEEDINGLY easy(at least compared to people who aren't trying to run proc heavy builds).

Personally I don't like this type of pvp, it's not that fun for me, though I imagine it probably is for users of these sets considering some always use them. I just hate how almost every fight in pvp has been flooded with these procs, I want to fight players and not feel like I'm fighting their gear. A lot of these proc users just proc and then kite/run until their procs go off cooldown so they can proc you again if they fail, and it makes for the most boring tango imaginable.
It's like when Nightblades would hide in cloak until pre-nerf Caluurions would go off cooldown, they don't fight until they have the ability to proc you to death.

I don't like proc-heavy metas because fights tend to devolve into this 24/7.