Let's talk constructively about the AoE cap.

The_Drexill

So we all have our opinions on whether this is good or bad (most people seem to lean over to the "bad" side)... I personally think it's a bad "sweeping" change... all AoE's limited to 6 people would of course make the PvP lean further into the "Bigger numbers wins" game play that we've seen in other titles (Guild Wars 2, Warhammer Online).

Let's come up with constructive ways to change these instead.

I believe a spell like Impulse, or Meteor... open to all, anyone can benefit from this spell, should be uncapped AoE... but, I believe it should have a cast time of 1.5 seconds.

Impulse is the games go-to PbAoE skill, I compare it to the Eldritch's, Spiritmaster, or Frost Wizard of DAoC. Meteor is the Ultimate ranged AoE burst.

Vampire, like Werewolf is a tacked on side skill... it's a disease. I believe that these skills should be mostly passive, small gain abilities. I don't believe that they should replace all the others. Werewolf is underpowered right now, but probably more in line with what these *should* be. A sudden burst of berserker rage for the wolf, a passive stat increase for the vamps... a few skills to liven things up.

If these abilities are too strong, we may as well be playing Twilight Online instead of Elder Scrolls... everyone will be one or the other.

My fix? Exactly what Zenimax proposed. Cap Bat Swarm at 6 players hit. That way a Vampire tank is formidable, and likely will win a 1v1 against a non Vampire tank (unless he's built to kill Vamps)... but they're not invincible.

Other AoE abilities I believe should remain as they are. Lightning Flood, Volley, abilities like this are already fairly weak, and the AoE area is quite small (morphed lightning is bigger, at the cost of damage).


What do others think? What other skills need changes?

lyndsayporterb16_ESO

of course all the veteran sorcs in PvP are whining about an AoE cap. and look at that, another unfunny reference to Twilight. Cuz that *** never gets old.

SwampRaider

So, okay. If there is an AOE cap, at least fire ballistas will be able to temporarily stop zergs

amonengelb16_ESO

AoE cap takes away control of your character. Just saying. AoE cap is a step towards handholding mechanics while players can hide in zergs. Consequent gameplay is actually the way to go in my opinion.

TES games are known for reasonable skills and mechanics. We don't have plated bikinis which make a tank out of your character, if you raise your shield you actually block incoming attacks, you are able to interrupt skills you see. Why wouldn't a AoE sandstorm hit all people inside the sandstorm? AoE capacities work absolutely against the use of visual indicators TESO has.

It takes away control of my character in uneccessary and unreasonable ways. If the tooltip says "Immobilizes nearby enemies" then I expect that my skill works like this as described in the tooltip.

AoE CC skills are absolutely needed to fight larger groups as an underdog. AoE caps simply encourage stacking into one pixel. This is an unreasonable tactic which doesn't work well with the skills and visual indicators we have. We could have 30 players standing on one point, spamming heal skills and purge while all of them block. And then this is called "good use of tactics". I mean ... is this how tactical PvP looks like to you? I doubt it. AoE cap encourages unreasonable PvP tactics ... it further drives the underdog to stay the underdog.

In fact we can't really compare skills to DAoC's one because DAoC has a pretty strict interrupt system which justifies really strong damageskills. In TESO we have uninterruptable PBAoE skills which are castable while you're moving. They would need a casttimer to justify high directdamage to be interruptable. Strong skills in general should be more likely to be interruptable while you have to use them good instead of just buttonmashing all your strong skills as the Mist Form and Pulsar. I think such skills would absolutely and simply need a higher casttime as 1 second just to be interruptable. If your enemies wouldn't interrupt your cast then its their own fault.

The_Drexill

lyndsayporterb16_ESO wrote: »

of course all the veteran sorcs in PvP are whining about an AoE cap. and look at that, another unfunny reference to Twilight. Cuz that *** never gets old.

I'm not a Veteran rank, nor is my main a Sorc. I'm sorry the Twilight Reference hit home for you, I didn't mean anything against you.

This is more for constructive ideas... so next time, be a part of the fix.

dahl.lucas_ESO

a delay to casting would really screw with the pve side. Otherwise, I don't see why they would make a change like this. Might as well limit AoE heals too then. I bet they have not thought of that one yet. Rework the vampire skill line? sure! Adjust how bolt or "broken" claws work? alright! Limit an AoE effect from being what its suppose to be in the first place? Makes no sense. that's like passing a law where if you fly a kite, it can not exceed 20 feet in the sky.

I had some hopes, but now I am starting to wonder a little if ESO really knows or understands what they are doing with a change like this.

prana33b14_ESO

Meh, the more i think about it the more I believe what someone else in some thread said may be true. The ability to AOE in pve content they want to be difficult will make it too easy to clear. This is more troubling than proposing it as a fix to PVP imo as we are already starting to see where their priorities are at. If this is true, they should be making the pve *** more difficult instead of this garbage.

Arpheus

I think that one main problem of AoE is that it can procc leech effects making the caster of a 20 target AoE extremely survivable.

In my opinion they should change leech effects to be activated max once per second (just an example) or once per skill activation so that they can't proc 13 times of 20 people with over 60% crit chance which seems possible.

Also make a hard cap on ultimate cost reduction of 50%, make a hard cap on absorb of 50% so that you can't stack different sources from absorption to reach >100% damage absorb.

Give spells a 0.5 sec or even a 0.1 sec cast time so you can't use them while blocking and make AoE Spells strong in the center of the AoE and getting weaker the further away from the center a target is so that we have some kind of AoE weakening.
This could work as an alternative to a 6 target AoE cap.

Xsorus

When people say "You can't have AoE hitting like in DAOC, because DK's have heavy armor and can't be interrupt"

I'm starting to think those people didn't play DAOC.

Yes you could interrupt a Caster in DAOC unless they popped moc, But you have to understand.. a DK in heavy armor in this game does NO WHERE near the damage of a caster in DAOC. 2 Casts...That's all it took to wipe people with PBAE in DAOC... and that could happen so fast it'd make your head spin.

Even the huge whine about Vampire Bats...which main problem is Ultimate Cost, not that it hits lots of people, comes anywhere near the damage of PBAE in DAOC.

Enigmatix

jonathan.levyb16_ESO wrote: »

I think that one main problem of AoE is that it can procc leech effects making the caster of a 20 target AoE extremely survivable.

In my opinion they should change leech effects to be activated max once per second (just an example) or once per skill activation so that they can't proc 13 times of 20 people with over 60% crit chance which seems possible.

Also make a hard cap on ultimate cost reduction of 50%, make a hard cap on absorb of 50% so that you can't stack different sources from absorption to reach >100% damage absorb.

Give spells a 0.5 sec or even a 0.1 sec cast time so you can't use them while blocking and make AoE Spells strong in the center of the AoE and getting weaker the further away from the center a target is so that we have some kind of AoE weakening.
This could work as an alternative to a 6 target AoE cap.

I really think the idea with the AoE Spells getting weaker away from the center is a good idea.
I think they should adjust some AoE Abilities not all.
It will only lead to the situation in PvP where large numbers of players stick together because not all will be hit by AoE Attacks.(what a nonsense only because one is numer 7 in a Fire does not mean he will not burn)
The Zerg will win -.-
I think they should only limit leech effect by targets.
And give AoE Stuns a percentage to proc on each target in the area or something like that.(the percentage should be fairly high so that you will hit most targets but sometiimes some will not be effected).

Westcoast14_ESO

With no player to player collision in PvP, due to the substantial processing overhead involved, there are currently no tools other than AoE abilities to counter the relatively simpleminded behavior of mass stacking players within a tiny radius at an attack point.

Limiting the number of players hit by AoE abilities, in particular damaging abilities, takes control away from players and dramatically swings the balance in favor of mass stacked player onslaughts (zergs). Densely packed zergs represent in many ways the antithesis of skillful play. Selective targeting is impossible. They enhance processing lag, and positioning other than staying within tightly passed zerg mass becomes largely meaningless.

While I would agree that the single player god mode enabled by self-heals (by healing I mean broadly any form of attribute pool restoration, not just health) and buffs where the self-heal and buff scale with the number of opponent’s impacted should be addressed by some limit on the number of targets ala Drain Power, the currently conceived broad limit on AoE healing and DPS abilities represented by the current PTS patch is excessive.

To enable the kind of zerg busting that is required for skill based mass PvP, a highly skilled small group absolutely needs to be able to kill a much much larger low skilled group. 10-1 is not at all unreasonable as a kill ratio, in particular when a substantial majority of the larger group isn’t paying attention (being effectively AFK by showing almost no situational awareness).

As a more balanced approach, for the broad mass of AoE abilities (aside from the “god mode” abilities described above) I would instead recommend something like a target centric diminishing returns for AoE’s. For a given target, the largest AoE hits with full force. The second largest AoE hits with diminished force. The third largest AoE hits with further diminished force. This could be tuned to give all players more time to react to highly stacked AoE damage. It could also be tuned by ability type, ex. a different form of DR for ultimates than for standard abilities). While potentially limiting the power of small groups, this approach also limits the potency of massive groups. Further, it provides an impetus for including single target damage.

In the short term I would strongly advocate only fixing “single player god mode” abilities by limiting the number of targets. In the medium term I would strongly recommend a more gradual approach to mitigating any undesirable impacts from AoE’s at large along the lines of the above or some other form of diminishing returns. I would only use hard limits on the number of targets as an absolute last ditch solution.

Soban

Bat Swarm and Impulse are both already capped at 6 by the way, as are most PBAEs. This change mainly destroys the usefulness of stationary GTAEs, most of which are uncapped, which honestly seemed intentional until the patch notes came out.

Samadhi

lyndsayporterb16_ESO wrote: »

of course all the veteran sorcs in PvP are whining about an AoE cap. ...

I'm a level 44 Nightblade with 0 AoEs in my build.
I think that capping AoE target amount is not a good idea.

Devotion

lyndsayporterb16_ESO wrote: »

of course all the veteran sorcs in PvP are whining about an AoE cap. and look at that, another unfunny reference to Twilight. Cuz that *** never gets old.

Its not even a sorc ability. That clearly shows you have no idea what you are talking about.

And please don't swear you are likely to get banned for it

chrisub17_ESO104

Good we needed a thread that is absent of all the knee jerk reactions.

Right now we have a lot of aoe that hits like a truck, and has no cap. And we have a lot of cc in the game. I don't think that combination is really balanced well.

So the question is what knobs do you tweak. I think aoe caps are appealing to the dev's because it's a straight forward solution that probably requires the least amount of effort, and the least number of changes to game mechanics.

On face value, I like the idea of diminishing returns. But after thinking about it I'm not sure how it would actually work. A target cap and a diminishing return solution is still a cap, just of a different type. Without severely nerfing the total amount of damage done, in large battles I think the application of the damage would get spread out in a way where there really would not be that much of a difference between a target cap and a cap based on diminishing returns. I think it has potential, but it needs to be thought out more.

You also have the whole issue of how does this effect pve. If they never designed their systems in a way where they could have pve and pvp specific libraries, especially for core systems, this could be a real issue. Judging by how the game works now, my guess is any solution has to work in both pvp and pve. I don't think they want things to work one way in pve and another in pvp.

Tuning the damage that aoe does is probably the least appealing solution. It would have a rather large impact on a lot of things, and would probably completely break pve without having entirely different damage tables for pve and pvp.

Lastly I would say that aoe caps in this game, cannot really be compared to aoe caps in other games like GW2. The mechanics of how aoe works in these games is just vastly different. Aoe dps in GW2 was already limited in how many could apply to the same area, before caps were ever put in place. Stacking was a thing because of mechanic that ESO doesn't even have. I'm not advocating for caps, just saying caps in ESO will play out differently then the caps that were in GW2, because the base game mechanics were vastly different.

CrashBlack

It's hard to talk constructively about what feels like a move to reduce tactical gameplay.

Should the few be able to take on the many? That is what it comes down to. I say YES!

Mykah

There is nothing skill based about running into 100 players spamming 3 abilities and expecting to "skillfully" land 300 attacks every 5 seconds, that is what siege weapons are for. Note that siege weapons are stationary, require defense to hold, and can only be fired once every few seconds. Compare that to Sorc and DK AE which is mobile and spammable and clearly there is a balance issue.

Also I hear a lot of talk about how this will only help the zerg, it will destroy skill, ect ect. Ask yourselves, what about skill in a zerg vs zerg situation, (the MAJORITY of sieging going on in game) What kind of zerg did unlimited AE foster in the uncapped system? I'll tell you, it made stacking DK Sorc Vamps with a few Templar heal bots the end all be all makeup for any group size.

120v200 the AE spam makeup wins.
60v100 the AE spam makeup wins.
40v80 the AE spam makeup wins.
20v40 the AE spam makeup wins.
8v16 the AE spam makeup wins.
6v12 the AE spam makeup wins.

You guys seriously support this?

THIS is why they have an AE cap, its not to make sure the zerg crushes the little guy, its to make sure that different classes and builds are all viable in massive pvp. The vocal minority on this forum crying at the top of their little lungs are kidding themselves if they think its "skill" that was letting them nullify the efforts of a force twice their size, it was AE mechanics shredding through under-leveled players in mass that let them do it.

Pressing 1 button and directly damaging 100 other people is rediculous in a game where other builds only can damage one person at a time. This is not just a "leet small group" vs "nub zerg" issue, it is a zerg vs zerg issue, its a 12v12 issue, its a 6v12 issue. Its about creating a balance between all playstyles regardless of the numbers involved. Step back and look at the big picture here, the entire game does not revolve around you Sorc or DK ae spam, nor should it.

firestorm_rmb16_ESO

Everyone advocating AOE needing a nerf in any way is flat out terrible in PvP. Learn to bloody dodge and stop standing in groups of soft looking flesh. If you bloody missile strike a group of people with Meteor they deserve to get rekt. It's THEIR FAULT for standing together like a bunch of crying babies.

If anything, buff AOE Spells so that whiny stupid gamers in ESO don't complain about being destroyed in seconds for just standing there "Participating" Then the lot of you Trophy asking bads will just leave and make the game that much better for those of us who actively TRY to avoid getting nuked.

Gervis

I interestingly agree that a cap is a solution, but a larger one at that to enable small groups still to fight against the larger "zergs". Maybe a cap of 12 or 10 would be more appropriate?

Although I agree with the post above me that ultimate should be allowed to hit a large number as they are an "ultimate" ability. As proposed by others another solution would be to increase the cost of AoE/PBAoE abilities to make it harder to spam.

I think something else to add is immunity timers for types of cc, this will prevent the spamming of it we see currently and lead to more intense and skill play by organised groups using the associated abilities more efficiently, especially in small group fights.