Why is the answer to ballgroups always sets?

MincMincMinc · August 6

YandereGirlfriend wrote: »

That would definitely kill the Mythic completely if that is what your intention is.

Game doesn't need any more dead Mythics than it already has.

Well it is already pretty useless for solo or small group gameplay since most solo players still need a source of major expedition which is usually tied to immunity anyways.

For groups it still makes sense for guaranteed immunity while they still get group expedition saving the skill slot for everyone.

So it doesnt affect smallman, but makes ballgroups require more thought

Kaelthorn_Nightbloom · August 6

It's funny because there will never be a set that is effective against ball groups or it will get nerfed.

Major_Mangle · August 6

SkaraMinoc wrote: »

It's funny because there will never be a set that is effective against ball groups or it will get nerfed.

Well, we did have Azureblight (which required an organised comp of 3-5 to be effective for anti ballgroup gameplay) but ballgroups didn't like to have counterplay and having to rethink their comps and strategies so here we are

MincMincMinc · August 6

SkaraMinoc wrote: »

It's funny because there will never be a set that is effective against ball groups or it will get nerfed.

I think group sets in general are just balanced terribly which is the main issue. Unless they are designed around a 12man and balanced within a % of normal sets the game will hard favor only group gameplay. Effectively preventing new players from ever joining pvp or staying.

Live:
Hundings = 50-100% uptime on 300wd
Clever alch = 44% uptime on 675wd
Rallying cry = 133% uptime on effectively 300wd on a 10 man = 3,000wd
Olorime = a 200% uptime on 430wd on a 10 man = 4,300wd

Who is running the numbers on the combat team? How are these at all close to being equivalent in power? Im sure someone here will say but oh its distributed....yeah but if 10 people run group sets that all give 300wd that nets everyone having a 3kwd 5 piece bonus. Also if I as a solo player have to work around a 50% uptime on a mediocre amount of wd, how come groups don't have to do the same for 10x the wd bonus?

Lets say a solo player can achieve a 300wd on a 100% uptime as a standard, group sets should only net like a 50 or 100wd bonus to all group members as the standard this way that 5 piece bonus is worth 100% uptime on 500-1000wd.

That or just give me back the old wd sets again and I'll shut up....... it is so boring boiling the game down to just crit damage gambling gameplay. The game used to house different damage paths with max stat builds not needing regen. WD builds being the well rounded active skill focused, pen being the full damage, crit being the gambling burst. Bring back old crit received Fury, 7th 450wd heal, briar constant uptime, ravaging high wd. Zos went too hard gutting the sets in ways that just eliminated the playstyles with hard cooldown windows and clunky stack mechanics.

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO · August 7

@MincMincMinc Rallying cry isn't 3000 its less due to the scaling (-15 per group member) but your point stands.

You also missed powerful assault, pearlescent, minor courage sets(but can get it from scripts too), Xoryns, Recovery convergence (for infinite sustain across your group)

MincMincMinc · August 7

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO wrote: »

@MincMincMinc Rallying cry isn't 3000 its less due to the scaling (-15 per group member) but your point stands.

You also missed powerful assault, pearlescent, minor courage sets(but can get it from scripts too), Xoryns, Recovery convergence (for infinite sustain across your group)

No RC is worth 300 on 10 people. It is literally two 5 piece bonuses. 300 wd(hundings rage) and 1650impen(impregnable) Which then gets halved on 10 people so realistically it is worth 300 wd applied 10x == 3kwd for one 5 piece bonus 100% uptime. Where solo players are only getting the equivalent RC of 600wd.....kinda doesn't equate here.

Start factoring in the other group sets across 10 people and you have:
1 solo = 600wd
10 pugs >> 600wd x 10 = 6kwd
10 man >> 3kwd x 10 = 30kwd

Yeah no wonder all the solo and smallman and pug players left the game. 2nd grad math students can tell you this. Its wild that people cant understand why the casual playerbase liked vengeance so much, its because you cant have these "top tier" players crutching on 10-50x the stats compared to a single player. Before the game was setup such that groups tapered off in effectiveness exponentially. While solo players had mechanics they could slot to level the playing field like wings, Ball of lightning, sap-siphon tanking, purge cloak, sunshield, biting jabs, master 2h.

For pvp to work in cyrodil you need to house a matrix of pugs, mid tier, and top tier gamers TIMES the gameplay methods of solo, smallman, big group. Right now you rarely see anything other than 24 man mid tier groups and 12 man top tier ball groups. Here below I guestimated the population distribution based on the fact that the server really only hosts about 50-64 players per faction. 24+ are in a zerg guild, 24 are in the two ball groups of 12 players, and the rest are spread however they can log in that night.

Ideally you want this distribution to be far more balanced between the pugs, mid, and top tier. Then for solo, small, and large group should be probably on a 1:2:3 ratio.

Major_Mangle · August 7

While solo players had mechanics they could slot to level the playing field like wings, Ball of lightning, sap-siphon tanking, purge cloak, sunshield, biting jabs, master 2h.

For me this hits the spot really. Ballgroups or organized 4-6 man can be strong, and if you want to allow the current type if gameplay as a developer, then sure fine. But then you also need to allow the other end of the "extremes" to exist in terms of counterplay. I know I sound like a broken record at this point but Azureblight was such a tool that when properly optimized for in a smaller comp (3-5 ish) you had a strong tool to threaten a ballgroup. The good ballgroups did find ways to counter it (and it wasn´t them who complained on the forums that it was too good...what a surprise....) but they still had to play more careful around it. Now you can argue that sets isn´t the proper way to counter such things, but if you want to allow one end of the extreme to exist, you also need to allow the other end of the "counter-extreme" to exist as well.

MincMincMinc · August 7

Major_Mangle wrote: »

While solo players had mechanics they could slot to level the playing field like wings, Ball of lightning, sap-siphon tanking, purge cloak, sunshield, biting jabs, master 2h.

For me this hits the spot really. Ballgroups or organized 4-6 man can be strong, and if you want to allow the current type if gameplay as a developer, then sure fine. But then you also need to allow the other end of the "extremes" to exist in terms of counterplay. I know I sound like a broken record at this point but Azureblight was such a tool that when properly optimized for in a smaller comp (3-5 ish) you had a strong tool to threaten a ballgroup. The good ballgroups did find ways to counter it (and it wasn´t them who complained on the forums that it was too good...what a surprise....) but they still had to play more careful around it. Now you can argue that sets isn´t the proper way to counter such things, but if you want to allow one end of the extreme to exist, you also need to allow the other end of the "counter-extreme" to exist as well.

it just doubles down being a worse design decision because not only are these players making everyone else unable to play......but these players are the main cause of the performance issues, which only further makes everyone else quite literally unable to actually play.

EvilGoatKing · August 7

MincMincMinc wrote: »

SkaraMinoc wrote: »

It's funny because there will never be a set that is effective against ball groups or it will get nerfed.

Who is running the numbers on the combat team?

Im fairly sure they answered that a while ago in the PVP/BG update stream with the lead combat dev.

Id link it but ZOS took the VOD down.

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO · August 8

Major_Mangle wrote: »

While solo players had mechanics they could slot to level the playing field like wings, Ball of lightning, sap-siphon tanking, purge cloak, sunshield, biting jabs, master 2h.

I know I sound like a broken record at this point but Azureblight was such a tool that when properly optimized for in a smaller comp (3-5 ish) you had a strong tool to threaten a ballgroup.

Azureblight was only good because of the bug with the proc tick rate when multiple players used it. This is also why they are further nerfing it in PVE to increase the number of stacks needed based on number of ppl in the the group using the set.

@MincMincMinc
the main tool of small groups against zergs back in the day was dynamic ulti scaling. It wouldn't really work in the server environment we have now though.

Also you shouldn't inflate the weapon dmg of Rallying cry, its strong without doing that. Just count the defensive sets up separately

MincMincMinc · August 10

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO wrote: »

Major_Mangle wrote: »

While solo players had mechanics they could slot to level the playing field like wings, Ball of lightning, sap-siphon tanking, purge cloak, sunshield, biting jabs, master 2h.

I know I sound like a broken record at this point but Azureblight was such a tool that when properly optimized for in a smaller comp (3-5 ish) you had a strong tool to threaten a ballgroup.

Azureblight was only good because of the bug with the proc tick rate when multiple players used it. This is also why they are further nerfing it in PVE to increase the number of stacks needed based on number of ppl in the the group using the set.

@MincMincMinc
the main tool of small groups against zergs back in the day was dynamic ulti scaling. It wouldn't really work in the server environment we have now though.

Also you shouldn't inflate the weapon dmg of Rallying cry, its strong without doing that. Just count the defensive sets up separately

What do you mean inflate the weapon dmg of rallying cry? i didnt? It just drastically scales in output with the more players you have. Groups do not need more flat out stats than solo players.

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO · August 11

MincMincMinc wrote: »

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO wrote: »

Major_Mangle wrote: »

While solo players had mechanics they could slot to level the playing field like wings, Ball of lightning, sap-siphon tanking, purge cloak, sunshield, biting jabs, master 2h.

I know I sound like a broken record at this point but Azureblight was such a tool that when properly optimized for in a smaller comp (3-5 ish) you had a strong tool to threaten a ballgroup.

Azureblight was only good because of the bug with the proc tick rate when multiple players used it. This is also why they are further nerfing it in PVE to increase the number of stacks needed based on number of ppl in the the group using the set.

@MincMincMinc
the main tool of small groups against zergs back in the day was dynamic ulti scaling. It wouldn't really work in the server environment we have now though.

Also you shouldn't inflate the weapon dmg of Rallying cry, its strong without doing that. Just count the defensive sets up separately

What do you mean inflate the weapon dmg of rallying cry? i didnt? It just drastically scales in output with the more players you have. Groups do not need more flat out stats than solo players.

taken from https://eso-hub.com/en/sets/rallying-cry:
When your healing critically strikes while Battle Spirit is active, you and group members within 12 meters of you gain 1650 Critical Resistance and 300 Weapon and Spell Damage for 20 seconds. Each group member affected reduces the Weapon and Spell Damage by 15 and Critical Resistance by 83. This effect can occur once every 15 seconds.

10*15 = 150
300-150 = 150
150*10 = 1500 not 3000. (assuming you hit all 10 with rallying)

MincMincMinc · August 11

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO wrote: »

MincMincMinc wrote: »

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO wrote: »

Major_Mangle wrote: »

While solo players had mechanics they could slot to level the playing field like wings, Ball of lightning, sap-siphon tanking, purge cloak, sunshield, biting jabs, master 2h.

I know I sound like a broken record at this point but Azureblight was such a tool that when properly optimized for in a smaller comp (3-5 ish) you had a strong tool to threaten a ballgroup.

Azureblight was only good because of the bug with the proc tick rate when multiple players used it. This is also why they are further nerfing it in PVE to increase the number of stacks needed based on number of ppl in the the group using the set.

@MincMincMinc
the main tool of small groups against zergs back in the day was dynamic ulti scaling. It wouldn't really work in the server environment we have now though.

Also you shouldn't inflate the weapon dmg of Rallying cry, its strong without doing that. Just count the defensive sets up separately

What do you mean inflate the weapon dmg of rallying cry? i didnt? It just drastically scales in output with the more players you have. Groups do not need more flat out stats than solo players.

taken from https://eso-hub.com/en/sets/rallying-cry:
When your healing critically strikes while Battle Spirit is active, you and group members within 12 meters of you gain 1650 Critical Resistance and 300 Weapon and Spell Damage for 20 seconds. Each group member affected reduces the Weapon and Spell Damage by 15 and Critical Resistance by 83. This effect can occur once every 15 seconds.

10*15 = 150
300-150 = 150
150*10 = 1500 not 3000. (assuming you hit all 10 with rallying)

For the sake of it lets ignore the numbers and call it a 5 piece bonus so we are on the same page. No point arguing semantics when we both want to compare the output of a set. I had converted all of rallying cry to be WD for you to easily understand without bloating the post with a wall of text.

Rallying cry is worth 2x 5 piece bonuses as a solo player (hundings+impreg=2x 5 piece set)
For a group of 10 players rallying cry is worth 1x 5 piece set since it is halved (1/2hundings + 1/2impreg = 1x 5 piece set)

A solo player at best gets 2x 5 piece bonuses

If the group of 10x groups sets is worth 10x 5 piece bonuses that comes out to 100x 5 piece bonuses. Then we wonder why ball groups are unkillable and lag the server, crazy. This issue will only get worse as the pokemon effect pushes zos to keep coming up with new ideas and inevitably more group sets that stack.

Might as well include zerg pug guilds. Lets assume they all run sets worth 1x 5p bonus....10 players essentially = 10x bonuses compared to a ball group's 100x. It is no contest, probably why we see ball groups taking up half the server slots and then just dueling on the sides of the map half the time. The player cap isnt large enough to house large enough zergs to counter their 100x bonuses.

Stridig · August 12

MincMincMinc wrote: »

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO wrote: »

MincMincMinc wrote: »

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO wrote: »

Major_Mangle wrote: »

While solo players had mechanics they could slot to level the playing field like wings, Ball of lightning, sap-siphon tanking, purge cloak, sunshield, biting jabs, master 2h.

I know I sound like a broken record at this point but Azureblight was such a tool that when properly optimized for in a smaller comp (3-5 ish) you had a strong tool to threaten a ballgroup.

Azureblight was only good because of the bug with the proc tick rate when multiple players used it. This is also why they are further nerfing it in PVE to increase the number of stacks needed based on number of ppl in the the group using the set.

@MincMincMinc
the main tool of small groups against zergs back in the day was dynamic ulti scaling. It wouldn't really work in the server environment we have now though.

Also you shouldn't inflate the weapon dmg of Rallying cry, its strong without doing that. Just count the defensive sets up separately

What do you mean inflate the weapon dmg of rallying cry? i didnt? It just drastically scales in output with the more players you have. Groups do not need more flat out stats than solo players.

taken from https://eso-hub.com/en/sets/rallying-cry:
When your healing critically strikes while Battle Spirit is active, you and group members within 12 meters of you gain 1650 Critical Resistance and 300 Weapon and Spell Damage for 20 seconds. Each group member affected reduces the Weapon and Spell Damage by 15 and Critical Resistance by 83. This effect can occur once every 15 seconds.

10*15 = 150
300-150 = 150
150*10 = 1500 not 3000. (assuming you hit all 10 with rallying)

For the sake of it lets ignore the numbers and call it a 5 piece bonus so we are on the same page. No point arguing semantics when we both want to compare the output of a set. I had converted all of rallying cry to be WD for you to easily understand without bloating the post with a wall of text.

Rallying cry is worth 2x 5 piece bonuses as a solo player (hundings+impreg=2x 5 piece set)
For a group of 10 players rallying cry is worth 1x 5 piece set since it is halved (1/2hundings + 1/2impreg = 1x 5 piece set)

A solo player at best gets 2x 5 piece bonuses

If the group of 10x groups sets is worth 10x 5 piece bonuses that comes out to 100x 5 piece bonuses. Then we wonder why ball groups are unkillable and lag the server, crazy. This issue will only get worse as the pokemon effect pushes zos to keep coming up with new ideas and inevitably more group sets that stack.

Might as well include zerg pug guilds. Lets assume they all run sets worth 1x 5p bonus....10 players essentially = 10x bonuses compared to a ball group's 100x. It is no contest, probably why we see ball groups taking up half the server slots and then just dueling on the sides of the map half the time. The player cap isnt large enough to house large enough zergs to counter their 100x bonuses.

Math and semantics aren't the same thing.

Also, ball groups aren't unkillable. Whole ball groups are getting bombed more than ever these days.

MincMincMinc · August 12

Stridig wrote: »

MincMincMinc wrote: »

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO wrote: »

MincMincMinc wrote: »

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO wrote: »

Major_Mangle wrote: »

While solo players had mechanics they could slot to level the playing field like wings, Ball of lightning, sap-siphon tanking, purge cloak, sunshield, biting jabs, master 2h.

I know I sound like a broken record at this point but Azureblight was such a tool that when properly optimized for in a smaller comp (3-5 ish) you had a strong tool to threaten a ballgroup.

Azureblight was only good because of the bug with the proc tick rate when multiple players used it. This is also why they are further nerfing it in PVE to increase the number of stacks needed based on number of ppl in the the group using the set.

@MincMincMinc
the main tool of small groups against zergs back in the day was dynamic ulti scaling. It wouldn't really work in the server environment we have now though.

Also you shouldn't inflate the weapon dmg of Rallying cry, its strong without doing that. Just count the defensive sets up separately

What do you mean inflate the weapon dmg of rallying cry? i didnt? It just drastically scales in output with the more players you have. Groups do not need more flat out stats than solo players.

taken from https://eso-hub.com/en/sets/rallying-cry:
When your healing critically strikes while Battle Spirit is active, you and group members within 12 meters of you gain 1650 Critical Resistance and 300 Weapon and Spell Damage for 20 seconds. Each group member affected reduces the Weapon and Spell Damage by 15 and Critical Resistance by 83. This effect can occur once every 15 seconds.

10*15 = 150
300-150 = 150
150*10 = 1500 not 3000. (assuming you hit all 10 with rallying)

For the sake of it lets ignore the numbers and call it a 5 piece bonus so we are on the same page. No point arguing semantics when we both want to compare the output of a set. I had converted all of rallying cry to be WD for you to easily understand without bloating the post with a wall of text.

Rallying cry is worth 2x 5 piece bonuses as a solo player (hundings+impreg=2x 5 piece set)
For a group of 10 players rallying cry is worth 1x 5 piece set since it is halved (1/2hundings + 1/2impreg = 1x 5 piece set)

A solo player at best gets 2x 5 piece bonuses

If the group of 10x groups sets is worth 10x 5 piece bonuses that comes out to 100x 5 piece bonuses. Then we wonder why ball groups are unkillable and lag the server, crazy. This issue will only get worse as the pokemon effect pushes zos to keep coming up with new ideas and inevitably more group sets that stack.

Might as well include zerg pug guilds. Lets assume they all run sets worth 1x 5p bonus....10 players essentially = 10x bonuses compared to a ball group's 100x. It is no contest, probably why we see ball groups taking up half the server slots and then just dueling on the sides of the map half the time. The player cap isnt large enough to house large enough zergs to counter their 100x bonuses.

Math and semantics aren't the same thing.

Also, ball groups aren't unkillable. Whole ball groups are getting bombed more than ever these days.

He was arguing that i was wrong because I didn't include the crit resist on its own and had converted it to be all weapon damage based. It had nothing to do with math and was just the meaning of the bonus. So i clarified by removing the semantics all together. The math still checks out, ball group 5 piece bonuses inevitably are worth 10x when solo players are only worth 1x or 2x at best.

Oh I forgot bombing existed, yeah i guess ball groups aren't a problem at all. There's no more server lag apparently because bombers exist and can maybe kill a ball group once every 10 mins to stop their effect casting for a few seconds until they respawn or rez ult.

xylena_lazarow · August 13

Because they're still bending over backwards to preserve Rushing Agony pull bombing as the large scale meta.

MincMincMinc · August 13

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

Because they're still bending over backwards to preserve Rushing Agony pull bombing as the large scale meta.

I'm sure some higher up at zos was convinced that the issue with pvp is there being too many players and they view these pull and bomb sets as the counterplay......then continue to add more ways for groups to stack effects

xylena_lazarow · August 13

MincMincMinc wrote: »

the issue with pvp is there being too many players

The players are gone, so mission accomplished!

MincMincMinc · August 14

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

MincMincMinc wrote: »

the issue with pvp is there being too many players

The players are gone, so mission accomplished!

Its funny because Greyhost is following the same death pattern that the Lowbie u50 server and the Nocp server followed.

New players are unable to solo play
Mid players are unable to solo play, new players are unable to small man group
The populations boiled down to only guild groups controlling the faction (GH now is just a zerg guild and 1 or 2 ball groups before pop locking)
Then a guild leaves the game or faction or disbands.
There is a power vacuum, that faction gets gated repeatedly over night
Old solo players dont care to seige and wont help fix the map in the morning
Mid tier players get run over without their group and leave after fighting the uphill battle to retake every day
Inevitably it becomes a 2 faction map until the 2nd faction guild disbands
Then its one faction with emp and all keep bonuses and stat boosts gating the other two factions daily each night.

When I ran my PCNA lowbie under lvl50 training guild in the 2015-2017 era we had to swap factions all the time to balance out the map. At some point we got sick having to Pvdoor every day to balance the map for new players to have fun. The second players got forced to their gate keeps, half the faction logs out. Cyrodil was never designed rule wise to help gated factions because they made the fatal flaw where they assumed it would always be pop locked campaigns of XXX vs XXX vs XXX players. However as it becomes XXX vs XX vs X players the trifaction balance method doesn't work.

It didnt help AD had the Aussie guild, love em to death, but they would flip the map 100% ad nightly. Then they translated to nocp and became the final straw for nocp which already had a large consistent ad pressence. Now they are in GH. The only saving grace is that greyhost poplock is soooo low that at least the trifaction balance is somewhat relevant. It will break down though as guilds or ball groups get bored fighting each other and no new players trying pvp fill the voids.

Gabriel_H · August 18

Only one damage shield allowed at a time, additional casts reset the timer.
Only one DoT of each damage type (fire, frost, disease, bleed etc) allowed at a time, additional casts reset the timer.
Give heals (three) different types similar to damage split (eg Holy, Arcane, Dark) and then only one HoT allowed at a time.

Problems solved:

Server Overhead
User machine lag/fps from graphical effects
Ball groups

Edit: Oh and while we are at it:
Change Weapon Damage to Offensive Power - Affects damage skills
Change Spell Damage to Defensive Power - Affects healing and shield skills
Split them out so that players are made to choose damage or heals. Having damage and healing scale off the same stat is ludicrous.