One thing that seems pretty consistent - even across different games that offer large scale pvp - is that often equivalent options are missing.

In ESO, this is HoTs - I won't claim this is the main issue or anything, but it's a good example. It's relatively easy to cover the group in layers of HoT (and absorb) effects to the point where the win condition is just 'is your burst high enough to chew through the health bar and absorb shields before the next HoT tick, heal, or absorb prevents it', or something to that effect.

Which, to some extent - fair! Coordinated groups should benefit from coordination and running specialized builds together. On the other hand, though, there isn't really any option for players fighting the blob. Take a look at HoTs vs DoTs, for example. If I wanted to run a supreme super duper DoT build, my build choice would be...To run something else because that isn't possible. The skills don't exist - it's orders of orders of magnitude easier to blanket a group in HoTs and absorbs than it is to try and deal with that through DoT application. The skills just don't exist in the game, or if they did they were nerfed (warden bug swarm DoT).

That isn't to say one player should be able to 'rot' an entire enemy group all on their own, of course, or that groups shouldn't have the benefit that comes with, y'know, having more people and being coordinated. But the benefits of having more players and being coordinated should be just that - there are more players and there's coordination, not that the game design and availability or lack of certain options for players also heavily favors them. The only other option I can think of off the top of my head is the Psijic Order CC that can be morphed to absorb healing, making it into an AoE CC + Healing absorb

Maybe sets like VD, etc, should be given the pale order ring treatment too - decreased effectiveness per person in your group. Enough that it's still useful, but open up other options. On the fence about that though, but worth a bit of a think.

TLDR:
- Despite intentions and marketing, ESO's build options are severely limited. Particularly in Cyrodiil, equivalent options to what the opponent does often just don't exist, or are shoe-horned into a specific armor set. Devs should expand skill options.
- Aforementioned armor sets could be changed to have decreased effectiveness for groups. Unsure if this would work, or if people would just make the dude/tte wearing VD not join the group but run with em anyway.

Perhaps group finder will help a little bit. It won't create ball groups to counter ball groups, but it'll hopefully be more like it used to be before group size was nerfed. At least where I play the saying is usually, "we don't group just follow zone chat". Which is fair except that limits individuals sets they can use and limits group buffs from being used effectively.
A bunch of solos with siege zerging down a ball group can kill them, but we also should look at how we are crippling ourselves before claiming it's all about the ball group being overtuned.

Sheezabeast wrote: »

Just wait till all the ball groups are DKs wearing the new armor set. You think they're unkillable now...

GooGa592 wrote: »

I wonder if future ball groups are going to be 80% DK's wearing new set and in perma corrosive armor.

Not a single ballgroup I know is even slotting corrosive armor or wearing a selfish ult regen set like daedrick trickery or bloodspawn and they will also not wear the dk class set beeing published next update especially now that they removed minor heroism of dk set and disabled ulti gen while in corrosive but also in PTS week 1 before these nerfs when you made this post. DKs in Ballgroups are usually supports using shifting Standart ulti with shackle synergy for dds and providing other buffs and synergys to the group.

BXR_Lonestar wrote: »

Its a multiplayer game. There's nothing wrong with people playing the game as a group - AS INTENDED.

People who complain about ball groups simply don't understand the difficulty it takes to coordinate with 11 other parties - and to find players who are unselfish enough to wear sets that are all about group synergy rather than individual combat effectiveness. If you're having a problem with a ball group and you don't have the numbers to take them on - simply go where they're not.

There is nothing unselfish about wearing group sets, you must wear them to be allowed into the ballgroup/participate in the ballgroup raids and get multiple times back what you give. And farming/ playing as a ballgroup against ungrouped randoms /smallscalers is also selfish and not fun for the other side. It would be unselfish if you wear group sets and help/support other players without getting anything back like playing with a group of starters or playing as support for your friends in solo builds.

Only because it is difficult to find 11 other players for coordinated group it doesnt mean you should get rewarded more than necessary for it, the difficulty is what prevents other players from making a ballgroup and they shouldnt get punished for something beeing difficult even more when the difficulty is already what prevents them from doing it.
And „simply going where they‘re not“ is also not a good solution because than the ballgroup can take keeps, scrolls and whatever they want to take and some ballgroups also like PvDooring.

Dark_Lord_Kuro wrote: »

Im not much of a pvp player but it seem wrong to to simply shut down a playstyle. They should buff the other ones in my opinion. What about a set tant reduce opponent healing taken by a lot like 50%,reducing its effect by x% for each of your group member or negating your ability to be healed by others? I also thing that an organized group should be more effective than a non organized one

Sure Ballgroup is a playstile and shouldn’t be completely shut down, but currently it is the strongest playstile superior to all other playstiles and doesnt have an easy counter and players are saying that if you want to beat a ballgroup you have to do your own ballgroup or even „If you're not ballgrouping in a large scale pvp area, you're doing it wrong“ like the following player „DirtyDeeds“. Only thing I know that can counter a ballgroup except another ballgroup or a big zerg is an organized Warden Smallscale dropping 4 deep fissure+dawnbreaker at the same quarter second.

DirtyDeeds765 wrote: »

You could knit a sweater for a hippo with all these threads complaining about ballgroups.

Ballgrouping is playing the game in the most efficient way. If you're not ballgrouping in a large scale pvp area, you're doing it wrong. That's like playing a game of basketball with random people you just met and complaining that the other team has roles and a plan. You wouldn't do that - or you shouldn't - you'd just be like "oh, duh, that's why we lost. Let me get a team and a plan together for next time."

You could nerf literally anything you think is the problem and you'd still get dunked on by 12 people playing in the most efficient way. Nerf heal stacking, support sets, dark con, abilities, whatever you think it is, and 12 people working together dumping ultis at the same time are still going to wreck you. Numbers and optimization will win every time vs numbers and no optimization.

@DirtyDeeds765

Edit: added the sentence after the comparison with basketball

Sure „12 people working together dumping ultis at the same time are still going to wreck“ 12 ungrouped randoms when they all wear solo builds, but they would be killable by same dmg that kills a solo player and wouldn’t be able to survive against whole enemy factions and wouldn‘t be nowhere near as strong as ballgroups are now. When a ballgroup would be 12 players with same healing, stats and buffs as solo players, than it would be ok and the ballgroup would really just be stronger because of coordination,
but currently each member of a ballgroup gets so much stronger by beeing in a ballgroup that a solo player having the stats, healing and buffs of a ballgroup player would be considered a cheater. Healing like a solo player was used as comparision how broken mara‘s balm was short immediately after its release before it was nerfed a few weeks later mid-patch.

doesurmindglow wrote: »

Oblivion_Protocol wrote: »

And yes, I get the cross-healing argument. I agree it should be tuned down a bit. But if that happens, ball groups will just find some other way to survive. Then, more nerfs will be called for, and the cycle will continue until everything in this game gets nerfed so hard, it goes from ESO to Pong.

Yeah what's most interesting about all the talk around crosshealing is besides the fact that the developers have recently and, according to 9.2 PTS patch notes, will continue to go in the opposite direction by buffing them, is the fact that stacking heal over time abilities was an adaptation to a previous popular nerf: a direct, obvious, and entirely predictable response to the consequences Plaguebreak introduced for "spamming" purge.

No one ever remembers now that before HOT stacking, this was the one silver bullet that if you just did something about, ball groups would cease to exist. But if you scroll back on the forums long enough you will find it, and you will find also that it didn't work. The result of multiple post-release changes to Plaguebreak is that it now finds its application almost exclusively as part of a ball group composition, much the same way that Vicious Death had before it.

Nothing was learned from that experience, and they actually subsequently DID nerf heal over time abilities, the effects of which have only further strengthened ball group compositions, so much so that people don't even seem to be aware it happened. The problem now is that adjusting crosshealing is already obsolete as an intervention: most groups are now stacking multiple layers of damage shields, enabled in part by powerful new sets and class abilities, that prevent healing from even being required in a lot of these encounters. Healing is, after all, a less potent source of mitigation than a damage shield: it essentially negates damage actually done to a player's HP, which doesn't even come into the equation if the only damage done is to the shields.

The strongest groups have noticed this, and reduced their healing profile to allow for more damage, dropping to a composition with 6 DPS, 2 or 3 supports who run things like PA and provide rapids or CC almost exclusively, and maybe just 3 dedicated healers. The balance is now much closer to the raid compositions you see in PVE, and that's largely because HOT stacking hasn't been as strong as damage shields and ultimate generation for about two or three patches.

Plaguebreak exploding when purged definitely hurt ballgroups, they are now vulnerable to Dots and Debuffs from skills, sets and siege. When I played in Ballgroup we died many time to dots we could have cleansed without plaguebreak.
It just wasnt enaugh to make ballgroups balanced because they are too OP and still have many other broken tools. Dont know who expected ballgroups would cease to exist if you nerf 1 of 5 op tools when thy still have 4 others. Only because a few people think they would cease to exist without purge and they still exist,
all ballgroup nerfs are useless and ballgroups never should getnerfed again?
Shortly afterwards with u33 hybridization ballgroups can use both radiating regen and echoing vigor having both scale with their higher stat when before 1 of them was scaling with offstat and much less effektive/barely worth slotting and only slottet as poor purge replacement.

U35 hot nerfs wasn’t specific nerf to ballgroups, they also nerfed single target HoTs like rapid regen and spirit mender(+morphs) including self HoTs like resolving vigor and a few PTS weeks later they reverted resolving vigor nerf and buffed it insteat. They didn’t nerf HoTs to nerf ballgroups, but „to increase accessibility“ and for unknown reason like most changes in update 35, they brought them in line with their new spreadsheet althought noone asked for.
THIS WAS NOT THE NERF TO BALLGROUPS PLAYERS ASKED FOR.
Crossshielding is the same problem as crosshealing only with shields, so shields should get included in crosshealing nerf.

Plaguebreak was useless against not purging zergs and solo players except for the DoT part that is useless for ballgroups too until ZoS decided+changed that dying also counts as „removing it early“, so now it is a group variant of vicious death that only one player has to wear and the whole ballgroup (and other allies) can kill target to proc it. They also gave it a 20 seconds, when duration is 10 seconds, nerfed the DoT and made it not proc from NPCs, so now only few solo players still use it except for bombers.
It practically got reworked from an anti ballgroup set to a ballgroup set.
Ballgroups can even purge again carefully when the set is not on them atm, when there is no player using it or when duration is over and they are still on cooldown. They can also split short, purge plaguebreak while not in each others aoe, than stack again and spam purge while on cooldown.
Plaguebreak cooldown should be removed, it also made wearing maras balm in group to unrisky. The DoT of plaguebreak could scale with number of nearby players or even better with number of multitarget HoTs.

Four_Fingers wrote: »

Yes, let's remove organized groups the game was designed for so solo players can prevail. /s
You all need to X up!

Maybe the game wasn‘t designed only for solo players but I also doubt it was designed exclusively for organized premade groups. I assume it was designed for lfg/Pick-up-Group(PuG), but ZoS destroyed PuGs when they reduced Group size to 12. In Battlegrounds you also get grouped with randoms so why should Cyrodiil be only for organized premade groups?
Organized group PvP is also much more exclusive and unaccessible than solo pvp because organized premade groups play only play with their regular members and not with randoms, so if you aren‘t regular member of an organized group and there is no PuG you are forced to play Solo and solo play has become very unfun. Most solo players nowadays are playing solo because they cant find a group and not because the want to and even many good players and former 1vXer don’t go Cyrodiil without a group.
And only because „Solo players“ are called „Solo players“ and dont run around in a group all the time doesnt mean that they are really playing solo all the time and dont make use of multiplayer modus and better should play a single player game, they are still fighting other players and often they participate in a Siege or in big battles between their own and another faction and fighting together with nearby allies.

Four_Fingers wrote: »

AstroST wrote: »

Since I'm bored at work I will say it once again because seems people forget what this is about:
no one asked to remove the ball group play style but only to tone down some mechanics that can be exploited so that an organized group can be immortal

Is this so hard to understand?

OP called it cancer so I guess we took the bait.
Organized groups are no more immortal than an Xer taking on 20 players.
Or 20 zerglings chasing me down.

Sure they are more immortal than a 1vXer, a Ballgroup has the option to healstack, buff each other with skills and groupsets while a 1vXer doesnt have access to anything the X or members of a 12man group doesnt have acess to. Each Player including each of the X can use a 1vXer build on his own without depending on other players, Xv1er can even use the same build as the 1vXer he is Xv1ing. 1vXer have no potential build strength /stat/dmg/healing/mitigation advantage over (each of) the X, Ballgroup have multiple(≈5) times the healing of the 1vXer or the randoms they fight on each member, 1.5-2x/double the dmg and much higher stats including about 2000 extra wpn/spell dmg (major and minor courage, powerful assault, rallyng cry, minor brutality/sorcery), 8k more resi(ozezan, meritorious) and 3k more crit resi(rallyng cry, transmutation),20+% more crit dmg (major force by Sul-Xan, major+minor brittle on target), major+minor breach and other armor debuffs on target permanent, major+minor expedition and much more. And 1vXers cant take 20 players, most 1vXers left the game or joined smallscales or ballgroups because you cant 1vX anyone but PvE players anymore.

DrNukenstein wrote: »

They could make all buffs from skills and sets limited to your group.

They could limit group size to 4, so ball groups have a much harder time giving everyone every buff all the time combined with the above idea

They could persistently mark the location of groups that are "killing it" on the map to both drive up activity and make it easy to track where the ball groups are.

Siege weaponry specifically designed to counter ball groups. Something like a "star venom gas bomb" that can apply snake in the stars in an aoe (this one would be brutal for zergs, but zergs are just disorganized ball groups that may have more people)

A separate campaign for people who want to roll in big organized ball groups, so they can get together and talk about buff sharing while they fight forever without dying


Again, limit hot stacking. Yes, the pugs benefit from it too. They never benefit from it as much.

4 man group size limit would completely destroy PuGs that already suffered from 12 man group size limit. Maybe they could limit sets to 4 man subgroups as PuGs group mainly for chat and see each others direction on map and not for group buffs and skills.

AstroST wrote: »

Four_Fingers wrote: »

, don't know where the myth about ball groups not fighting ball groups comes from. I mean how would you even know you are not there obviously if you don't see it.

I obviously don't know how things work on PS but just come PC EU if you wanna see your myth.

Was in a Ballgroup on Pc EU for a few month and we didnt avoid fighting other ballgroups If we were heavily outnumbered(Even in Ballgroup fights the group with more players has advantage). However a ballgroup v ballgroup fight is always a risk to die and beeing unable to enter keep again when the other ballgroup isn’t much weaker(then they will probably run away so again no ballgroup v ballgroup if you dont chase them over half the map and kill them where nobody can see you), so you only want to engage another ballgroup when you are at full strength(all ultis, synergys and proc sets ready).
When there is a unorganized Zerg and a Ballgroup in a keep battle, as a Ballgroup it is easier and gives more ap to fight the Zerg than the ballgroup and you can also ask the ballgroup for a g(uild/roup)vg(uild/roup) or fight the ballgroup after you killed the Zerg while the zerg often leaves/disbands after taking the keep and you cant ask them for a gvg because they are not a guild/ organized group and dont have a leader nor interest fighting your ballgroup.
Also „Zerg surfing“ as a ballgroup to kill another ballgroup is seen as unhonorable(Ironic that there is still honor between some groups of the most broken playstile when honor between solo build players vanished years ago and ballgroups 12v1 solo players unhonorably).

My problem with most ball groupos is that they take no interest in the campain and their constant farming ruins the experiance for people who actally want to play the game as zos intended. I have no problem with good solo players that just want to farm because you can choose to ignore them. But when a ballgroup is running around in a keep with no interest in capturing it what are you meant to do, if you leave them they will turn the keep then go back to farming players.
At the end of the day games are meant to be fun and this takes a lot of the fun out the experiance and is frustrating to many of us.
we should be trying to encourage more people to play this game but this style of play is more likely to put people off.

Ball groups are fine - if you want to play them go for it. Its a game you paid for play however you want.

Balls have one great problem - siege. They can't siege a defended keep and it is the only thing that hurts them significantly, so they adapt and all eventually do the same things.

Look to pvdoor a keep and get inside before defenders react.
When inside and unable to flip both flags run upstairs to los and avoid siege.
Run around outside a keep being sieged by another faction - close to the keep wall to avoid most siege.
Wait for another faction/group to open a keep then run in.
As a warmup take the outpost between the 2 opposing factions.

All ball groups do a variation of this because they have to.

They due generate nice Dticks so good on em.

DizzyMac wrote: »

You want the easiest way to stop ball groups in cyro?

Stop all cross heals in pvp.. simple

This wouldn't really affect groups too much. Groups power comes from group sets and coordination more than cross healing, it would mainly just affect the roles available in group since everyone would just play a self healing tank with a tiny bit of burst dmg (more so than they do now :P)

AstroST wrote: »

BXR_Lonestar wrote: »

Its a multiplayer game. There's nothing wrong with people playing the game as a group - AS INTENDED.

People who complain about ball groups simply don't understand the difficulty it takes to coordinate with 11 other parties - and to find players who are unselfish enough to wear sets that are all about group synergy rather than individual combat effectiveness. If you're having a problem with a ball group and you don't have the numbers to take them on - simply go where they're not.

So you say that following a crown and just spamming aoe and smart heals all the time is very difficult.
A ball group to be good just need one person to be good, the one that tell everyone what to wear and what to do.
I have tried it a couple of times and was so mind numbing boring that I lost every interest very fast because you are not someone that have to think, you just need to do what you are told to do, like a bot.

This is so far from the truth.

What mess?
Working a intended.

I've stopped playing pvp because of the ball groups. It's completely pointless and ruins the gameplay. I blame ZOS and no one but ZOS for not solving this.

Here's a solution: MAKE THE GUARDS INVULNERABLE AND ABLE TO MOVE ACROSS THE ENTIRE KEEP WHEN IT'S UNFLAGGED!! MAKE THEM 1-SHOT PLAYERS!! Look how easy it is to fix?? It'll effectively stop the running around and FORCE siege which will allow for COUNTER-SIEGE!

With all do respect they have buffed them continuously for most of the game's life. To expect anything else is foolish. Do as they want: play in a ball group or leave.

Tiphis wrote: »

With all do respect they have buffed them continuously for most of the game's life. To expect anything else is foolish. Do as they want: play in a ball group or leave.

ZOS just cannot do anything about people playing in groups being stronger. Even if they were to make groupsize max of 1, people will still find a way to work together. There's literally nothing realistic they can do. Buff solo? Then all those individual members of a group get buffed as well. And 3+ people vs 1, you are fighting against far larger stats.

Well considering Cyrodiil's primary purpose is for group play with the ability to still play solo, what do you expect?
Maybe they should make Cyro mandatory grouping and give solo players something like BGs.

Tiphis wrote: »

With all do respect they have buffed them continuously for most of the game's life. To expect anything else is foolish. Do as they want: play in a ball group or leave.

I actually have come to the same conclusion.

Every playstyle that was overperforming at some point got nerfed. Bow ganking is the prime example. It was low risk & high reward. Nowadays bow is a meme. I could give way more examples, but I hope that you get my point.

The only exception is "ball group" playstyle. ZOS kept buffing them over the years (sometimes indirectly) and arguably they never received a single nerf that would target only that playstyle. One might argue that reducing group size was a nerf, but it had more to do with global Cyro population limit change.

The weirdest part is that they have means to nerf ball groups & only ball groups without affecting any other playstyle. For instance, there are sets (Pale Order, Rallying Cry etc) that scale with the group size & get weaker the larger the group is. Devs could added something like this directly to battle spirit & make it affect skills, passives, everything. Other very often mentioned thing is to reduce stacking of "same type" positive effects, to like 3 or something, so that "average Joe" solo player or small scale group would not feel it at all, but "ball group" would not be able to stack 10+ Vigors & Regeneration all stacked with 100% uptime giving them 20K+ health recovery.

TLDR: Devs have the means to balance out ball groups and making it in a way that would affect only ball groups & not nerf any other playstyle. But, for whatever reason they don't do it. It is almost as if they wanted ball groups to be hyper OP & unbalanced. Therefore I simply think that Devs consider ball groups to be their target PvP audience. I am not surprised that PvP in this game is dying. With approach like this, the experience is actually horrible for newcomers & I would argue that even for PvP veterans if they don't run ball group, the experience is like a garbage fire at this point. I can fully understand players not sticking with PvP for long or leaving once they got max AW rank & skill points.