90k Ballgroup Shields

RaidingTraiding · June 25

Yesterday in Cyro I was at a keep fight with an enemy ball group that had players with up to 90k shields. They were actively taking siege damage too so no telling how high their shields could actually reach. Feels pretty ridiculous that not long ago the most I saw in shields was 40-50k and that was already overpowered, so now we have double that amount. Not sure why zos (and most players) have chosen to focus their attention on hots when clearly meta ball groups have long moved away from focusing on hot stacking for survivabillity and are now optimizing for having high shields with high uptime.

The problem has been compounding for a while now, it first started becoming a problem when arcanist and scribing came out, it then expanded to new sets that gave group shields as well as optimizing builds with subclassing, and now sorc class mastery has really upped the shields strength potential on some builds. Some groups have also started running magma shell, which was buffed with the DK rework. One major issue is shield strength scaling off max hp, with shielders in groups now having a minimum of 60-70k hp, even with an hp cap on some skills. Groups can get away with building that high hp because sustain is already widely ignored when running multiple sets of Recovery Convergence in group. I'm also not sure if this is still as big of an issue, but when the ball group shield meta was first starting to emerge, groups would run multiple Arkasis in group with infused potion cooldown glyphs on jewelry so they could have a barrier rotation which made it so they would have a barrier up at all times.

This problem should be looked at sooner rather than later, there's no way that having over 90k shields on top of over 40k hp is anywhere near balanced. It's pretty ridiculous that not even another ball group (you can forget about small groups and pug groups) has enough burst to burn through their shields and even touch their hp bars. There are multiple solutions that could be used to fix this. You can put a hard cap on shields so no matter how many shields they stack they wont be able to go over that amount, put a reasonable cap on hp scaling of existing skills, limit how many shields can be active in a group or even on a per player basis, get rid of hp scaling shields all together and have them scale with something else for a reasonable amount, or even adjust shield strength in battle spirit. Another option to look at would be adjusting dispel on the trample scibing skill. You could get rid of the cast time on trample, speed up the mount, or even up the amount of shields it can get rid of (currently 1). Either way, it's a good mechanic that has a lot of potential but doesn't get used because of those limiting factors. Either way this problem is only going to get worse if not addressed.

olsborg · June 25

Im eagerly awaiting this new dev team to address ballgroups in pvp, reign them in hard....but, ive been sitting on this spot for like 5 years so I dunno, Im not holding my breath anymore.

BetweenMidgets · June 25

While I am of the mindset that if 12 people are willing to give up their solo survivability (or ability to kill anyone) to run as a much stronger group they absolutely should be able to do that, I do also agree that the shielding meta is out of control.

Having 66k hp is already really gross, but a legit 90k shield? I question if they're even a ballgroup anymore... but the real question is how is anyone to manage that? I haven't thought extensively about it, but my initial thoughts are that ZoS shouldn't allow this sort of thing.

I guess a tank-ballgroup is probably more of a nuisance than an actual ballgroup. At least with a real ballgroup, you kill one or two of their members and you'll either be able to kill the whole group, or they'll jump out because they really do rely on having all their members up. With a tank-group like you have pictures of, where at least 2 of their members have over 60k hp, they can keep this abomination going much longer.

As an aside.... I still miss the old harmony bombers, who could take out an entire ballgroup if they were resting on their laurels.

Kickimanjaro · June 25

This conversation was interesting from about 5-6 months ago, but didn't really go anywhere: https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/688179/what-makes-ballgroups-more-powerful-and-is-detrimental-to-pvp-balance-sticky-hots-or-shields/p1

I tried to have a follow-up on the HoT talk, but no one was interested in that either.

So, it'll be good to restart the conversation here re: shields.

They are too strong, and I say this as a support player who has a fondness for Gibbering Shelter. I like the ballgroup style and want it to continue, but not like this.

I want to hear from the devs, though! They tried to address community concern re: coordinated group survivability with that hasty HoT debuff in Battle Spirit... but there's been no follow up! And it's not impactful enough to matter! What's going on? What data do they have? Where do they want to go? Many questions...

Tommy_The_Gun · June 25

olsborg wrote: »

Im eagerly awaiting this new dev team to address ballgroups in pvp, reign them in hard....but, ive been sitting on this spot for like 5 years so I dunno, Im not holding my breath anymore.

I play this game since launch and quite literally the only "nerf" that ever happend to a ball group was the reduction of groups size from 24 to 12.... but that had more to do with max Cyro population being reduced, so it is hard to call it a nerf.

I thinking that the reason for this preferential treatment is that maybe ZOS considers ball groups their "target audience" when it comes to PvP ? I mean every single play-style have been nerfed multiple times, except for ball group... Since 2014 they only receive indirect or even direct buffs...

RaidingTraiding · June 25

Tommy_The_Gun wrote: »

olsborg wrote: »

Im eagerly awaiting this new dev team to address ballgroups in pvp, reign them in hard....but, ive been sitting on this spot for like 5 years so I dunno, Im not holding my breath anymore.

I play this game since launch and quite literally the only "nerf" that ever happend to a ball group was the reduction of groups size from 24 to 12.... but that had more to do with max Cyro population being reduced, so it is hard to call it a nerf.

I thinking that the reason for this preferential treatment is that maybe ZOS considers ball groups their "target audience" when it comes to PvP ? I mean every single play-style have been nerfed multiple times, except for ball group... Since 2014 they only receive indirect or even direct buffs...

They actually have received a multitude of nerfs over the years, but the main thing about ball groups is there are multiple roles and builds in each group since they optimize and comp for 12 people. They may simultaneously nerf one thing while they let something else sit still, while also buffing something else or adding in something new that was more powerful than what they had before. A few examples of nerfs would be nerfing healing springs so they don't stack, adding in plaguebreak so they no longer have a purge spammer, nerfing harmony, and nerfing healing in battle spirit.

The past few years though the greatest buff to ball groups imo has been hybridization which allowed them to stack a lot of hp and switch to stam dds which greatly reduced the effectiveness of negates, and allowed everyone to run echoing vigor. That and adjustments to armor meant they were also not limited to a certain armor weight (ex: most members now run medium armor for major evasion). Oddly enough though, the nerfing of harmony and proxy det, although a nerf to ball group damage, actually turned out to be a major buff, seeing as the strongest aoe burst damage in the game was no longer a threat, and they still have enough damage to farm players without it. Now a bomber, small group, or even another ball group fully specced into high aoe burst will still greatly struggle to even get through a fully comped group's shields which now get up to 90k.

Another big culprit is the constant addition of powerful group buff sets, along with powerful mythics like snow treaders. Scribing also is a big contributor to the power creep, especially for shield stacking. Could go into detail on all of the recent additions and changes that greatly buffed group play, but it's probably better to stay focused on one thing at a time, which shield stacking deserves the full focus, seeing as that alone exponentially increases the survivability of groups to ridiculous levels. Don't get me wrong though, group play and coordination should be rewarded in an mmo, but not to these extreme levels, where comps and builds become a full carry.

Tonturri · June 25

It's still so, so much easier to blanket a raid in HoTs than it is with DoTs.

Easier to have 100% of HP or more in shielding than it is to apply healing absorbs or debuffs.

Far easier to buff than it is to debuff.

HP is easier than ever to stack and more effective. I keep seeing % limitations on how much of a player's total HP a shield can take up, but it's per shield and it never actually limits anything.

Lots of problems. Some are root causes, some are symptoms. GW2 did a good job of putting a cap on barrier - it can only go up to 50% (PvE, sPvP) or 25% (WvW) of a player's health pool. Not the end all be all solution, but worth a shot. Maybe each subsequent shield on top of the stack is less effective base on health threshold? Up to 50% HP: 100% effectiveness, then 50% until 75% HP, then 25% from 75-100.

All this shield stacking does weird stuff in PvE too and it makes things very boring.

The Uninvited · June 25

Tommy_The_Gun wrote: »

was the reduction of groups size from 24 to 12.... but that had more to do with max Cyro population being reduced, so it is hard to call it a nerf.

And that caused our casual weekend group to completely fall apart because we couldn't keep everyone in the same group...

React · June 25

The shielding really needs to be reigned in. Im not sure what the best solution is, but I'd love to see them at least test some blanket adjustments like they did with the HOT stacking change. Perhaps shields being capped at 50% of your HP combined, rather than their own meaningless caps of 25/40/50/60% of max hp individually. They could even increase the tooltip of individual shields to compensate for people who aren't benefitting from having all the buffs and stats of a comped 12 man group.

ArctosCethlenn · June 25

Ultimate shields shouldn't stack, so no more layering barrier + magma + gibbering shelter. Then at least while battle spirit is active, no shield or heal should scale off of max health.

gammelscroll · June 30

Just stop play this game, and stop have eso +. When they lose 10 k players maybe they start do something

ToddIngram · July 1

How long have we been begging for ZOS to nerf cross healing and shield stacking now? This relates directly to thread about whether or not we feel our input is being acted on by zos thread. I won't feel like ZOS is "working on it" like they've said for so long until they at least try limiting shield and heal stacking.

DrGIggles80 · July 2

Facts are Shields are completely busted in PvP. They need a major nerf in strength but my honest opinion to end it all is just stop them from stacking. easy peasy end of problem