Healing, undeath and damage balance issues in PVP

master_vanargand · July 13

Zyaneth_Bal wrote: »

master_vanargand wrote: »

Zyaneth_Bal wrote: »

Turtle_Bot wrote: »

Durham wrote: »

Zyaneth_Bal wrote: »

merevie wrote: »

There are other ways to counter ganking than 40k health.

Detect

Block

You can’t block a gank because it’s a gank, obviously, unless it happens by accident or you hold block permanently.
Detect pots only have 37% uptime max and detect skills rarely work due to server lag. You can press it while on top of someone and then they still go invisible.

Also keep in mind that Night blades run major and minor expedition! They are quickly out of detect range. Most groups will have to burn multiple detect pots to kill a good night blade.

And even then those groups will have to be of at least above average in skill level to actually attempt to get that kill.

Zyaneth_Bal wrote: »

It’s true that nb and sorc population has gone way up recently but it should be noted that both have always been among the most popular classes simply because they are the closest to the generic “mage” and “rogue”. It’s true that nightblade is overperforming currently but despite what some say, sorc is in a good spot right now and the contrast in pop change is only that drastic because up until very recently sorc has been experiencing the literal rock bottom, and even then many still kept asking for nerfs. Sorc is a high risk, high reward class and people always have issues with those. Besides being the generic “mage” the other reason for sorc’s popularity is that for the first time in a long while it’s genuinely fun to play again because once again you can actually get the “reward” I just mentioned.
Already too much text not exactly on topic so I’m not going indepth on either class. Just thought it wouldn’t hurt to clarify.

As the topic was on changes that need to compliment the undeath nerf (which once again is totally justified) and issues like excessive healing and easy access to huge amounts of damage, ganking in particular as the reward vastly outweighs any risks still left and due to it’s nature it currently offers no real counterplay without heavy investment.

tbh I'm curious to see what happens with class populations this patch. All of the ability based "counters" to cloak that were reliable (ele sus, entropy, etc) got fixed this PTS cycle, yet NB has not received a single reduction to its survivability to account for that direct (and massive) buff to cloak (in fact its defensive buffs got easier to maintain on top of this).

Without those abilities being able to break cloak anymore (which did need addressing) and if NB survivability outside of cloak is not addressed even a tiny bit this PTS cycle, I would not be surprised to see the NB population explode again this patch as ganking becomes even easier and safer than ever before.

Btw elemental susceptibility applies concussed and chilled which are direct damage and direct damage removes stealth, so it is working as it should imo.

No, single direct damage does not remove stealth.
Only AoE direct damage, Detection potion, and Detection skill can destroy invisible and stealth.
This can be understood by reading the information written in the official old patch.

Single target direct damage does remove stealth, skills like curse and potl for instance. Your misunderstandings stems from the fact that there are very few sources of single target direct damage that actually remove stealth because they need a target and thus have to deal delayed damage because they obviously can’t be use when the target is already hidden.
Therefore the absolute majority of direct damage skills that remove stealth are aoe.

No, you're wrong.
Single direct damage cannot destroy stealth, with some exceptions.
Some delayed bursts are the only exceptions.
For example, you'll see that if you use Cloak after seeing an enemy player's flame staff heavy attack, the attack will hit but Cloak will not be broken.
This is easy to understand with testing.

Lags · July 15

master_vanargand wrote: »

If the player's health is within the execution range, they should die.
If you fail to manage your Health, you should accept it.
Undeath is set to be nerfed, so reconsider your other survival strategies.

posts like this are so out of touch. And it makes it incredibly hard to ignore. So either you are not pvping or you play a ganker. Or maybe you're new, im not sure. But no experienced pvper is going to think that this change isnt going to cause ganking to have zero counterplay. It already has very little counterplay.

I run 35-40k health on a lot of builds. Most of the time 30k resist, 3k crit resist. And when i get ganked i am instantly, within 1 second, brought down to sub 10% health, many times sub 5%. Since i have a fast reaction time, 99% of the time i survive it, detect pot, and kill the nightblade that cant play as soon as cloak is gone. That being said, in the same situation after this change, i am sure i would not survive it.

So basically, yet again, somehow, they are buffing nightblades. Specifically ganking. But also other things, as others mentioned. Radiant is a big one. So ya, your take is just terrible and completely out of touch. Damage needs to be nerfed, slightly. I am no fan of undeath but they have been balancing some things in pvp based partly on the feedback of of pvp players, most of who run vamp for undeath. So its going to feel pretty bad once this happens.

Panderbander · July 15

If you relied on undeath to survive ganks then I'm sorry to say this change will hurt, but at no point was undeath required to survive ganks. I say this as a career werewolf player that very, very rarely ever ventured out into the world on a character with vampirism, and ganking was never a serious issue when playing as a human build. I can count on one hand the times I've been successfully ganked and they are almost universally because I had a lack of responsiveness to the gank happening; never because I didn't have undeath to save me.

olsborg · July 15

The problem, imo, is that going defencive either by blocking or healing or whatever it is, is much, much easier then going offencive. Meaning that playing well offencively is much harder then playing well defencively. Because of healing, tankiness and proccsets that heal or make you more tanky.

Van_Winkle · July 15

Ahah) You guys think, that undeath nerf will help you?) No, it will hits you in first place - cause ballgroups and smallscales will hit you much harder now) And you still can do nothing to them. And to many old and skilled players. And to exploiters)

darvaria · July 15

Players are thrown out of groups if they have less than 30K hp UNLESS they are a proven bombers. I watch ppl get one and two shot that have less than 30k. I avoid them and don't even try to heal them.

I do have 40k plus health and have yet to be solo ganked. But watch others get 1 hit all the time. If you nerf our 30% damage reduction, then nerf ALL burst damage. There should be no burst damage above 7 or 8K. This burst damage is what keeps new players from coming back to PVP.

FoJul · July 15

No shot we still complaining about gankers. I can't tell you the last time I died to a ganker. They are not even in the top 5 issues.

Proc sets and their ability to crit. (this includes vateshran destro)

Cross heals. (There should be another healing debuff in battle spirit similar to rallying cry {Depending on how many group members there are, nerf healing by 8% per member or sum.)

Burst heals. No one should ever hit 12k+ Burst heal. If they do it should cost them more and take out of their sustain.

Cloak is somewhat still an issue. Not as bad.

Finally, Battle spirit gives free 55% damage mitagation. Use the idea of some other mentions in this thread, and make it 75% damage mitagation at full hp with a 1 Minute cooldown or sum. Idk. But free mitagation is a bit too high for all this healing we got.

YandereGirlfriend · July 16

Zyaneth_Bal wrote: »

xDeusEJRx wrote: »

Deimus wrote: »

This will only lead to people building more hp, armor, and mitigation elsewhere. Getting ganked or bombed without being able to respond is the biggest reason people build tanky. I'm sure you've all heard "If you're under 30k hp you are fuel for the bomb" now without that mitigation it will go up to 35K or 40k minimuim. Whatever it takes to give decent players a chance to react.

Then we'll get more threads replacing the undeath ones complaining about healing or the tank meta that refuse to acknowledge the root cause of people building tanky in the first place. If you could survive at 25k hp without going from 100-0 in an instant you'd see people running around with 25k hp. With undeath at 1/3 potency the future hp and resist/mitigation min will adapt to make up that 2/3 difference.

"If you could survive at 25k hp without going from 100-0 in an instant you'd see people running around with 25k hp"

This is completely false, the reason why people run high HP is because it benefits you to do so on a lot of builds. Take for example high health warden, you can become unkillable via super high HP polar winds and make your group nigh unkillabe which result in groups with 50k+ hp healing each other and never dying. I once saw a 100k health warden emperor with polar wind and his group never died because of the cross healing. No one would run low health just because damage is low, they run high health because the game makes high health OP in many ways.
You get OP shields, you get OP cross healing, you get OP survivability and without having to sacrifice anything and still being a Damage dealer. None of that has to do with 100 to 0 meta, it's because people want to be super tanky and damage dealers at the same time.

This change is good because now you have to build for it and you don't just get it for a negigible cost. The flame damage taken was not significant enough to make a difference and neither was the sustain cost. Sustaining hasn't been an issue at all since the introduction of Wretched vitality and sustain CPs in cp 2.0

High damage meta is good, making people make choices to get tankiness is good, being given mitigation while barely losing out on anything is bad. I'm not sure how people can be in opposition to it being nerfed.

You are both correct. Some builds can deal huge bursts of damage and high health is of the more reliable counters to that. It just so happens to also offer intense healing with little to no investment (however it must be noted that health scaling exists for the sake of pve tanks not pvp, sadly zos refuse to balnce pvp and pve separately). And putting together large health pool, strong healing and abundant mitigation from undeath in particular results into immense survivability.
As I said before all-around builds struggle finishing off opponents who are able to outheal sustained dps. Which in turn leads people to 100-0 builds.
Thus we have two prevalent types of builds at seemingly opposite sides of the spectrum at the same time.

Again as I said in my initial post this is a complex issue. Undeath most certainly was in need of a nerf but there are other factors and consequences to consider.

TBH, I've never understood why tanks should even have the ability to self-heal. That is, IMO, literally what a healer is for.

I know that there are certain mechanics in trials, etc. that require it but... the entire premise to me is flawed to begin with. The game would objectively be better without ANY health-scaling heals (or heals that scaled off of damage stats... but that's an entirely different conversation).

blktauna · July 16

I run lots of NBs and only 2 are vamps. Some are low health, some are high. In the end its about knowing when to get out., not about the health. I build into damage for some, crit for some and pen for others. Health is not something I build for.

Thats the thing, you should not be able to get all three at once. You should have to choose. For several classed thats not the case.

Vamp was a choice to take that extra flame and no healing to trade off for the damage. Now other choices will be made.

FlopsyPrince · July 16

Ganking is clearly a desired part of PvP, as much as I (and many others) hate it. I can't recall any changes to make it less profitable for the ganker at the very least.

FlopsyPrince · July 16

Auldwulfe wrote: »

Zyaneth_Bal wrote: »

Firstmep wrote: »

I am happy undeath is getting the hammer, but by the 8 they also buffed nightblades on top, like wth.

Indeed, that is a big concern. With core issues untouched after losing undeath people will feel forced to build more tanky and the situation will ultimately remain more or less the same.
While ganking has already gotten out of hand as the only way to counter it is to build 40k+ health.

The problem is that both sides are self fulfilling prophecies ... gankers gank, because it is the only way to have a chance at killing a 40K+ health heal-o-matic player, while that same player is building that, to survive a gank......

And since neither is getting addressed, they will continue, and eventually, be the only two playstyles in the game.

Auldwulfe

I don't see that as the main reason for ganking. Most of us getting ganked are not that buffed. We are just playing to do the quests, most likely.

Zyaneth_Bal · July 17

Undeath really was too strong but not on it’s own and there needs to be a way to deal with absolutely crazy damage that is so easily accessible now.
Currently it happens to be healing which, unfortunately, has gone out of hand. provided you are tanky enough to not risk 100-0, players have 7k+ hps without even investing into it. Add burst heals that on their own can heal back to full in a single gcd.

In my opinion we should gain some other sources of mitigation but healing should be nerfed significantly. That would bring up minimal ttk and would prevent players from being able to reset the fight in a matter of 1-2 gcds.
There have been lots of additions and changes since battle spirit was last touched. Perhaps it’s time for it to be updated.

Additionally, cross-healing still needs to be addressed separately. Most easy and straightforward solutions imo would be to limit the max amount of stacks of the same ability per player or to have subsequent applications have diminishing effects. Could be both to an extent.

xylena_lazarow · July 17

Undeath was horribly overpowered, ZOS themselves found it to be triple the power it should've been, and nerfed accordingly. If you are dying too much, you have a legitimate complaint in the form of ranged burst proc stacking. This is the worst thing in PvP right now and should be nuked from the meta asap, starting with Tarnished Nightmare.

Zyaneth_Bal · July 17

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

Undeath was horribly overpowered, ZOS themselves found it to be triple the power it should've been, and nerfed accordingly. If you are dying too much, you have a legitimate complaint in the form of ranged burst proc stacking. This is the worst thing in PvP right now and should be nuked from the meta asap, starting with Tarnished Nightmare.

I suggest you read my last post, if not change your opinion it might at least offer a different perspective.

xylena_lazarow · July 17

Zyaneth_Bal wrote: »

I suggest you read my last post, if not change your opinion it might at least offer a different perspective.

I did. Wanna know the secret to survival now? Run a defensive build. No more free 30% mitigation. You want tanky, you build tanky. Cross healing is its own issue, Undeath isn't a factor when health bars aren't moving in the first place.

Durham · July 17

Right now Night blades are almost or over 50% of the population and that is dangerously unhealthy for PVP. If you subtract people who run in ball groups the population is already even more unbalanced. When people step out to PVP to die instantly to a class they never even see pushes more people out of PVP than anything else. In the past Night Blades were one of the hardest classes to play effectively.

Currently PVP in my opinion is in a state where people are expressing a ton of frustrations. You don't see it on the boards like your did in the past because people have learned over the years that does little good. My small group was running every night for 2 to 3 hours lately we are running only a few days a week and we often just get frustrated with running into to nothing but Nightblades/Sorcs and to a lesser extent 50k Polar Wardens. Last night we logged after 1 hour of playing.

I was hoping for a class balance patch. Im very upset with the devs ignoring or delaying the blatant imbalance in the game.