This bomb meta is BORING.

Danse_Mayhem

Cyrodil PVP is just bombs and heal bots. Literally nothing else.
Sets like dark convergence, rushing agony, plaguebreak, vicious death and the masters 2H are the only thing on most peoples death sheet and they are doing ALL of the work. There’s no skill, class expertise or combos anymore.

Most decent keep fights are just over in a few seconds from whichever colour gets the best placed bomb, or has the most crayon eating carve spammers just mashing their face into one button.

So much wrong with this!

- No incentive whatsoever to build a balanced build. I can just run a zero resistance bomber with 3x damage sets on any class, and as long as I have race against time then I can just run / line of sight until you get bored. Then I’ll come back and blow up your group in one hit for some super engaging and enjoyable pvp for everyone involved (sarcasm)
- No incentive to teach lower lvl guildies pvp, because if they aren’t quick enough to block dark convergence, or can’t telepathically sense when a rushing agony pull is coming, then GG they are pulled to you and that’s another proc on your death sheet.
- No incentive to fight anywhere near randoms and other faction allies because you never know which one will fail a block check and be the death of you.
- Coordinated groups are just layering their dark con / rushing agony procs which makes it impossible to avoid getting pulled by any. Unless of course you want to just stand there blocking whilst a bunch of ultis go down.
- Just like the hammer, these ‘anti-Zerg’ mechanics are just used BY the Zerg / majority faction to stomp out any smaller group with ease.
- It’s literally the least engaging and most boring meta that has ever been a thing since beta. Feels like turned based combat where people are just spamming race against time and light attacks until they have their ult+balorghs then they nuke a group and refresh.

It has become SO stale… ZOS idk what you can even do about these sets but here are my suggestions;

Rushing agony / Dark convergence; Rework these sets and remove the pulls. The pull sets were neverrrrr a good idea for pvp and literally all feedback of the initial PTS had pvpers screaming at you to not make these sets live, and it was ignored. It kills all strats of choosing a perfect time to ulti dump and when staggered as mentioned above, there’s no counterplay.

Vicious death / plaguebreak; keep as they are. Without pull sets, these were never OP, and punished only the groups who naturally stood on a pinhead (not the ones forcefully pulled in by a carry set)

Master 2H. Have the damage from this somehow also scale from user damage. Atm any tank can spam this and hit 12-15k spammables if there’s enough players / guards in the area which is stupid.

This isn’t the first time I’ve posted about this and won’t be the last. People are getting soooooo bored of this bomb meta. Please change something for your pvp crowd!

UsualSurrender

Give Ravenwatch campaign a try.

Danse_Mayhem

Definitely would if it wasn’t dead all the time on PS… The No proc gameplay is so nice but there’s never any action

Nser

Ravenwatch/NO CP IC in its current form would need double AP/telvar on weekends to attract players.
I'm lucky enough on PCEU which seems to have the most "active" ravenwatch playerbase out of all servers, but its only truely playable (3bar pop) between like 6-10pm on a good day. IC has 1 bar pop at all times unless its double telvar.

Oblivion_Protocol

I’m not sure what version of Cyro you’re playing, but I would not call this a bomber meta in the slightest. I’ve gone hours in Cyro regularly and could count on one hand the number of bombers I’ve seen.

Now, if you’re dying to bombers running around in ball groups, then that’s a different problem altogether. But bombers are rarely a long-term threat or major issue outside of the Whitestrakes event.

OtarTheMad

Don’t forget one of the new PvP monster sets gives you a big shield when you are pulled or knocked back etc. So sets like Dark Convergence and Agony took a huge hit.

CameraBeardThePirate

OtarTheMad wrote: »

Don’t forget one of the new PvP monster sets gives you a big shield when you are pulled or knocked back etc. So sets like Dark Convergence and Agony took a huge hit.

Good luck trying to kill the group spamming you with Rush of Agony when you can't wear Balorgh.

Adding sets to counter sets has never been and never will be a good idea.

If a set needs to have a brand new set introduced just to counter it, there's probably something wrong with it.

Danse_Mayhem

Bombers in ball groups / hordes of bombers dotted around any zerg ; Same thing.

Actual combat with skill combos is dead during busy times. There’s no burst combo on anyone’s death sheet, just a mash up of pull / proc sets that do all of the work.

People are just realising there’s no down side to playing a bomber. You can make some balanced 1vX build and ‘maybe’ come across a small group of PVE/questers and get some kills with normal combat - But you’ll do nothing in big scale combat. Or you can just build a cheesy bomber and spam mobility skills in between ultimate drops, and occasionally you’ll actually wipe groups.

It’s been this way for ages, and is stale as hell.

Poss

Make a negate spam. Soon as you see the animation of DC appear, whack your negate down. Your teammates will appreciate you for it 😂

Marcus684

Oblivion_Protocol wrote: »

I’m not sure what version of Cyro you’re playing, but I would not call this a bomber meta in the slightest. I’ve gone hours in Cyro regularly and could count on one hand the number of bombers I’ve seen.

Now, if you’re dying to bombers running around in ball groups, then that’s a different problem altogether. But bombers are rarely a long-term threat or major issue outside of the Whitestrakes event.

I've also noticed a distinct drop off in the number of bombers. It used to be you'd see at least 1 at every flag flip, but I've seen probably 2 since the last patch.

If by bombers the OP means the ulti-bomb ball groups, even they have dropped off some. Before the patch there was usually at least 2 balls per alliance poking around our back keeps every night, but last week I saw 2 AD balls farming at Ash twice and not much beyond that, and even when a ball got into a tri-keep they usually got wiped fairly quickly. Maybe more players are making use of the new anti-bomb set and making these playstyles harder to succeed at.

OtarTheMad

CameraBeardThePirate wrote: »

OtarTheMad wrote: »

Don’t forget one of the new PvP monster sets gives you a big shield when you are pulled or knocked back etc. So sets like Dark Convergence and Agony took a huge hit.

Good luck trying to kill the group spamming you with Rush of Agony when you can't wear Balorgh.

Adding sets to counter sets has never been and never will be a good idea.

If a set needs to have a brand new set introduced just to counter it, there's probably something wrong with it.

Well, I wouldn’t attempt to kill a group by myself anyway. Pick off a few falling behind, sure but all of them? Nope. I’ll probably just wear 2 offensive sets if I am using this as a monster set. I haven’t had a ton of time to play tho since U39 dropped.

Oblivion_Protocol

Danse_Mayhem wrote: »

People are just realising there’s no down side to playing a bomber. You can make some balanced 1vX build and ‘maybe’ come across a small group of PVE/questers and get some kills with normal combat - But you’ll do nothing in big scale combat. Or you can just build a cheesy bomber and spam mobility skills in between ultimate drops, and occasionally you’ll actually wipe groups.

It’s been this way for ages, and is stale as hell.

Having played several bomb builds myself, I can absolutely say that telling people there’s no downside is patently false.

If you try to play a build that can 1vX, you won’t be able to effectively bomb large groups. If you play a dedicated bomber, God help you if you only run into a few players at an objective without a group to back you up. So, at a minimum, you need to be in a group to function efficiently with a full bomber build.

Also, playing a bomber outside of Midyear Mayhem is often boring. You spend a lot of time either avoiding fights or Zerg surfing against small groups. And when you do find a group to act as a sufficient bombing target, you have to time your buffs, your bomb, and your approach just right.

And even if you can pull off the big kaboom and kill lots of players, you’re not guaranteed to kill everyone. I have seen so many instances where I’ve survived a bomb and basically said, “Congrats on killing those seven people. Now, the five of us you didn’t kill are going to rip your spine out and finish capping the objective like you were never even here.”

So, playing a bomber is nowhere near as easy as you think. If there’s a bomber in a Zerg or ball group, again, the problem is the group, not the bomber.

xDeusEJRx

AoE nuking has always been pretty boring pvp, but the pvp for ESO has degraded to the point where the only real way to kill players is with nuke sets or egregiously powerful proc sets or proc combinations (like Scavenging maw and Masters FB/Vateshran BB).

Those are the only real ways to damage through the tankier builds that exist because zos is intent on adding more and more defense to classes patch after to patch.

Obviously there are some builds that are exception to the norm, but defense has notoriously been stronger than offense and it's really gotten worse since Update 33 (Ascending Tide) patch. Back when everyone was running Restoration staff back bar spamming regen in every fight, that's when it first began to become really difficult to kill players.

I think from then on pvp went downhill and now you're kind of forced to run a nuke/bomb set up to be on your A-game in pvp

Rohamad_Ali

Boring for you.

RaikaNA

Nser wrote: »

Ravenwatch/NO CP IC in its current form would need double AP/telvar on weekends to attract players.
I'm lucky enough on PCEU which seems to have the most "active" ravenwatch playerbase out of all servers, but its only truely playable (3bar pop) between like 6-10pm on a good day. IC has 1 bar pop at all times unless its double telvar.

Uh, you don't have to worry about fighting with people's proc sets in Ravenwatch. I think that alone should attract people to come to the server. Oh and there's no hammer in Ravenwatch too so that's an extra bonus.

BetweenMidgets

Can't take this post seriously when OP says "bombing is so easy, just need RAT and tower hump". Just LOL.

Why don't you actually give bombing a try. Before you say "I've done it before and killed a bajillion," you clearly have not.

Sn00ps

Bombing is not as easy as you make out, and personally I love this element to the current meta and hope it stays. I dislike super tanky high time to kill long ass fights that become more of an endurance test for your fingers than fun, at least zergs can be destroyed by bombing fast as opposed to making the game even higher time to kill by removing the one thing that can be a counter to zerg gameplay. Its really good fun when you get two ballgroups trying to out bomb each other by stacking ultis and any good ball group can easily avoid getting bombed with decent healers and game sense i.e blocking, roll dodging at the right times and there is even now a cyrodiil monster set that gives you a huge damage shield when you get pulled.

MsGurrl

I agree w OP. And raven watch can’t replace the 30 day campaign some of us like to sign up for.

Danse_Mayhem

BetweenMidgets wrote: »

Can't take this post seriously when OP says "bombing is so easy, just need RAT and tower hump". Just LOL.

Why don't you actually give bombing a try. Before you say "I've done it before and killed a bajillion," you clearly have not.

Lol… I have. And if you go by YouTube video upload dates, then I was one of, if not the first to put magblade tether bombers together. I was one of the first 5 stars on PSEU for being magblade bomber emperor every few weeks.
I also had emperor on PSNA on a magcro on the dark dark convergence came out (before the nerf, and before literally anyone blocked it) and had that set together an hour after the patch dropped. Im sure you can imagine what a colossus every few seconds in that situation meant.
I have plenty of ‘experience’ in bombing and it’s only ever gotten easier over the years.

For reference;
- At release we didn’t have proc sets, and proxy det took much longer to unlock. The trade off is that there wasn’t a tank meta. But we still had to time it so people were stacked well as there were no pull sets.
- Now? Sure we have people running so much more health, but I can lotus fan into a crowd on mag blade and pull everyone to a pinhead with rushing agony (you may say jUsT bLoCk dArK cOnVerGeNcE, but rushing agony isn’t telegraphed at all and is instant) then soul tether, then rushing, soul tether and proxy all hit for 12k+, and anyone who drops will cause vicious death to clean up, which has a 25k tooltip.
- Then we have the even easier, less technical bombers. Which are just essentially any class with a master 2H, mashing their face against the carve button. Pair this with corrosive / Goliath / sanctum or even the vampire ult and there you go.

Please don’t tell me this play style is difficult in defence of this stuff. It requires no balance, no build sacrifice and nothing other than building prod sets together.
If it was a legit counter to zergs or ball groups then I’d be for it. But an actual Zerg will just have too many that your bomb of 12-15 people won’t make a dent and they will just res each other, and proper ball groups are full of 40khp players that won’t get scratched by this.
These cheesy bomb builds serve pretty much only to decimate un-optimised players / noobs during a mid year event, and punish anyone + everyone around them for not being a tank.

I don’t think I’ve encountered a single person who likes the ‘tank meta’ right? And this is only getting worse with the groups of 40-50k hp arcanists who are near invincible.
Ask why this meta has become necessary? It’s because anything less is an instant GG for you and all allies when you get bombed.

I hope that provides enough insight to my point. The first part is not to brag at all, but I do have a solid understanding of this and have seen it develop in real time over the years since release.

olsborg

Itemization has gone way, way too far, master weps, specially dw rending slashes builds and other proccsets such as maarselok and vateshran ele sus builds, just 99% pure itemization builds.

Danse_Mayhem

olsborg wrote: »

Itemization has gone way, way too far, master weps, specially dw rending slashes builds and other proccsets such as maarselok and vateshran ele sus builds, just 99% pure itemization builds.

Exactly this… Players can just stack carry sets and class identity goes out of the window. Hoping the class sets maybe add some diversity to that, but IMO we can’t blame people for jumping on the 40-50k hp meta when pull sets exist, because it’s the only way to survive someone else not having a proper build and blowing you up.

IxSTALKERxI

Elder Sets Online