Im sorry, however fighting none stop Ball Groups is just not fun

Drusse · August 15

This is not the first time someone has posted this, I know. Actually it has been posted many times. The problem is nothing is done about it.
The ability to stack multiple shields, and heals is not good. This is a cancer to this game, that just doesn't get addressed no matter how many threads there are about it.
It ruins the Cyrodiil experience.
More and more players are leaving the game just because of this.
I do agree there should be a advantage to grouping, but not to the point it is now. Many easy fixes have been posted, however none implemented.
The server is not playable when many BG;s are present.
This game could be so great, however it is not. Vengence is not the answer, however the fact that BG's are not present in it are the only redeeming features.
I have played this game for many, many years. I have left it many times also. It just gets to the point where my favorite ESO activity is so toxic the fun is gone.
I am once again getting to that place, as are many others. I have seen many youtube videos stating the same thing.
Once again I apologize for bringing this topic up again.

Sluggy · August 15

Drusse wrote: »

I do agree there should be a advantage to grouping, but not to the point it is now.

The advantages to grouping and organized play are inherent to grouping and organized play. No further in-game mechanics would be required for this to be an increase in survival and damage output.

BioBitter100 · August 15

Drusse wrote: »

This is not the first time someone has posted this, I know. Actually it has been posted many times. The problem is nothing is done about it.
The ability to stack multiple shields, and heals is not good. This is a cancer to this game, that just doesn't get addressed no matter how many threads there are about it.
It ruins the Cyrodiil experience.
More and more players are leaving the game just because of this.
I do agree there should be a advantage to grouping, but not to the point it is now. Many easy fixes have been posted, however none implemented.
The server is not playable when many BG;s are present.
This game could be so great, however it is not. Vengence is not the answer, however the fact that BG's are not present in it are the only redeeming features.
I have played this game for many, many years. I have left it many times also. It just gets to the point where my favorite ESO activity is so toxic the fun is gone.
I am once again getting to that place, as are many others. I have seen many youtube videos stating the same thing.
Once again I apologize for bringing this topic up again.

I´m not in the mood right now to recheck pts notes but I think groups with 8+ members are actually getting nerfed with shield reductions and more, not quite sure on the details tho.

Sluggy wrote: »

Drusse wrote: »

I do agree there should be a advantage to grouping, but not to the point it is now.

The advantages to grouping and organized play are inherent to grouping and organized play. No further in-game mechanics would be required for this to be an increase in survival and damage output.

But there is a difference between a group giving you some advantages and a group making you so strong that you need 4+ solo players for 1 ball group member to actually beat them (so ~40 solo players for a decent 10 people ball).

Sluggy · August 15

BioBitter100 wrote: »

Sluggy wrote: »

Drusse wrote: »

I do agree there should be a advantage to grouping, but not to the point it is now.

The advantages to grouping and organized play are inherent to grouping and organized play. No further in-game mechanics would be required for this to be an increase in survival and damage output.

But there is a difference between a group giving you some advantages and a group making you so strong that you need 4+ solo players for 1 ball group member to actually beat them (so ~40 solo players for a decent 10 people ball).

I'm not sure you realize that you are arguing with me from the same side of the field on this one.

Asdara · August 15

i'm not sorry, i'm tired to the point of giving up pvp as a whole.

PoveusRonin · August 15

Imagine being new to PvP. Most older games have a difficult entry level for new players but this one takes the cake.

Four_Fingers · August 15

Boggles the mind that solo players think they should be able to take on a group of organized players.
Part of being good at PvP is knowing when to pick your fights and when to walk away especially if playing solo.
I have no sympathy for zergs though, that is what organized groups are supposed to counter.

NovelliESO · August 15

There are very few organized ballgroups that go for solo players. Most ballgroups look to fight other organized groups or the giant zerg of the entire faction that is clumped in one area. If you are being chased down by some ballgroup it is very likely that you tried to zerg them with the faction or they are just one of the very few that operate in this way.

Regardless, organized groups will always function better than those that are not, to have a good organized 8 person group and have them lose to 8 or so not organized players would be paradoxical because then whatever those 8 did to kill them would be employed by the organized group to then perform even better, but we know this doesn't happen.

Furthermore, groups got nerfed slightly with the 33% heal cut, the only issue with that patch, which many tried to make very clear at the time, was that nerfing healing without touching shielding would just change the way in which groups play. Now, with the upcoming PTS changes, shields are hit harder in organized groups than the 33% nerf to healing was. If you play in a good group, you can see players in 12 mans walking around with near 100% uptime on over 100k effective HP depending on their comp, which is very unbalanced. The max shield value will now be 60% of their max HP for 12 man groups, not perfect, but a good change nevertheless and a move in the right direction. All groups of around 8+ suffer to some extent, which is good.

MeridiaFavorsMe · 12:32AM

The shield size nerf for groups next patch is pretty huge, and honestly, it’s a great change. I think the cap could potentially be pushed even further, with the maximum shield size in a 12-man group being around 40–50% of max health instead of the proposed 60%. That said, this is still a very good start from the dev team and a meaningful step in the right direction.

CannedChicken · 12:38AM

MeridiaFavorsMe wrote: »

The shield size nerf for groups next patch is pretty huge, and honestly, it’s a great change. I think the cap could potentially be pushed even further, with the maximum shield size in a 12-man group being around 40–50% of max health instead of the proposed 60%. That said, this is still a very good start from the dev team and a meaningful step in the right direction.

I agree. Originally, when they were trying to implement the healing nerf, I tried to point out that these groups often aren't even having their health damaged in the first place. Because their shields are so strong, reducing healing does very little against them. They went ahead with the healing nerf without really addressing shields, even though shielding has been the much larger issue.

At least now they're finally getting around to addressing it. meatbags do a great job of reducing the healing these groups receive, but shielding is completely unaffected by oil, meatbags, and the other healing reductions. On live, it has gotten to the point where you can see these players running around with 80k+ shields, while pumping out 10–20k+ shield per second across the entire group. That's an absurd amount of effective health to constantly replenish.

So while I think the proposed 60% cap is a good start, I'd have no problem seeing it pushed down to 30% or even 20% for a full 12-man group. Shielding has been a much bigger part of the problem than healing, and it's good to finally see it getting some attention.

Teeba_Shei · 1:04AM

I actually think there’s another way they could tackle this too. If you receive, say, 5 different shields from players while in a 12-man group, you get a debuff that prevents you from receiving any more shields for 10–15 seconds.

The biggest problem to me isn't just how large the shields are, but how constantly they can be reapplied. Even if they nerf the maximum shield size, a coordinated group can still rotate through multiple sources and keep everyone permanently shielded. Putting a short lockout on repeated shielding would give those groups an actual vulnerability window instead of letting them continuously stack effective health.

Maybe 15 seconds is too short, but something along those lines could be a really effective way to stop shield spam without completely gutting shielding for smaller groups.

CannedChicken · 1:08AM

Teeba_Shei wrote: »

I actually think there’s another way they could tackle this too. If you receive, say, 5 different shields from players while in a 12-man group, you get a debuff that prevents you from receiving any more shields for 10–15 seconds.

The biggest problem to me isn't just how large the shields are, but how constantly they can be reapplied. Even if they nerf the maximum shield size, a coordinated group can still rotate through multiple sources and keep everyone permanently shielded. Putting a short lockout on repeated shielding would give those groups an actual vulnerability window instead of letting them continuously stack effective health.

Maybe 15 seconds is too short, but something along those lines could be a really effective way to stop shield spam without completely gutting shielding for smaller groups.

From what I've seen, it's really the 12-man groups, and maybe 11-man groups, that create the extreme shielding problem. Smaller groups can still stack shields, but they don't have nearly the same number of players constantly feeding shields into each other, and they can actually die fairly easily.

I think that's largely because these 12-man groups really only need a few actual damage dealers to put out enough pressure. Once they have 3–4 people focused on damage, they can fill the rest of the group with support and shield-focused players, which gives them an enormous amount of defensive utility without sacrificing much offensive pressure. That's why the problem becomes so much more pronounced at 11–12 players.

Teeba_Shei · 1:14AM

CannedChicken wrote: »

Teeba_Shei wrote: »

I actually think there’s another way they could tackle this too. If you receive, say, 5 different shields from players while in a 12-man group, you get a debuff that prevents you from receiving any more shields for 10–15 seconds.

The biggest problem to me isn't just how large the shields are, but how constantly they can be reapplied. Even if they nerf the maximum shield size, a coordinated group can still rotate through multiple sources and keep everyone permanently shielded. Putting a short lockout on repeated shielding would give those groups an actual vulnerability window instead of letting them continuously stack effective health.

Maybe 15 seconds is too short, but something along those lines could be a really effective way to stop shield spam without completely gutting shielding for smaller groups.

From what I've seen, it's really the 12-man groups, and maybe 11-man groups, that create the extreme shielding problem. Smaller groups can still stack shields, but they don't have nearly the same number of players constantly feeding shields into each other, and they can actually die fairly easily.

I think that's largely because these 12-man groups really only need a few actual damage dealers to put out enough pressure. Once they have 3–4 people focused on damage, they can fill the rest of the group with support and shield-focused players, which gives them an enormous amount of defensive utility without sacrificing much offensive pressure. That's why the problem becomes so much more pronounced at 11–12 players.

I think another big part of it is simply the number of targets. A 12-man group puts a ton of bodies on the field for pugs to hit, and because random groups generally aren't able to coordinate their focus onto one target, the damage gets spread across the entire group. That makes the shielding even more effective because there isn't enough concentrated pressure to actually burn anyone down. You can really see the difference as soon as the group loses even 1–3 players and drops to 9, 10, or 11 people. Suddenly there are fewer targets to split damage between, so it's much easier for random players to naturally focus the same people and actually kill them.

That being said, I do think there's a lot pugs can do to make these groups easier to deal with. They need to spread out more, avoid fighting in choke points, and actually hold block when they're being focused instead of just standing there and getting melted. The ability to swap builds out of combat also helps a lot now, and I'd be surprised if most pugs are actually taking advantage of that. I have an anti-12-man spec specifically for when these groups are running around inside our keeps, and being able to quickly swap to something designed to deal with them makes a pretty noticeable difference.

Four_Fingers · 1:27AM

Don't forget to identify and take out the healers when possible.

LoganSpencer1 · 6:39AM

1: There are like maybe 5 actual organized ballgroups that play the game actively, and they play in very small time slots of about 2 hours. Saying pvp is "nothing but ballgroups" or that the game is dying when it has queues of 100+ every night are wild exaggerations.

2: Most of the decent groups in this game spend hours analyzing comps, adjusting sets and abilities, pouring over logs to make sure they are playing how they think is optimal. No actually decent groups are just slapping things together and grouping up with random stuff and are suddenly taking on the entire server like you guys make it out to sound like.

3. You SHOULDNT be able to kill people who do the above^^^, are coordinated, optimized, and in comms together as a solo player or unorganized group. Complaining that you cant kill groups like that as a solo player who has probably never even looked at a log or played organized ESO, whether pve or pvp, will never cease to be an asinine argument.

4. If strong groups like this didnt exist, it would remove so much variety and skill ceiling from the game, and it would be reduced to a bunch of zergs just shooting siege at each other endlessly, keep fights would never end, it would just be boring.

5. You dont even have to fight ballgroups. Ignore them and go do something else. Cyrodiil is a huge place.

6. Ballgroups have been nerfed a bajillion times and you guys still complain any time someone in a group kills you and claim theyre some kind of exploiting ballgroup. Group play could get nerfed into the ground to the point of unplayability, players made so they can only heal or shield themself, etc, and once everyone is just a solo zergling shooting siege at each other, you guys would still find reasons to complain that things are broken or are exploits.

JohnRingo · 8:41AM

LoganSpencer1 wrote: »

1: There are like maybe 5 actual organized ballgroups that play the game actively, and they play in very small time slots of about 2 hours. Saying pvp is "nothing but ballgroups" or that the game is dying when it has queues of 100+ every night are wild exaggerations.

2: Most of the decent groups in this game spend hours analyzing comps, adjusting sets and abilities, pouring over logs to make sure they are playing how they think is optimal. No actually decent groups are just slapping things together and grouping up with random stuff and are suddenly taking on the entire server like you guys make it out to sound like.

3. You SHOULDNT be able to kill people who do the above^^^, are coordinated, optimized, and in comms together as a solo player or unorganized group. Complaining that you cant kill groups like that as a solo player who has probably never even looked at a log or played organized ESO, whether pve or pvp, will never cease to be an asinine argument.

4. If strong groups like this didnt exist, it would remove so much variety and skill ceiling from the game, and it would be reduced to a bunch of zergs just shooting siege at each other endlessly, keep fights would never end, it would just be boring.

5. You dont even have to fight ballgroups. Ignore them and go do something else. Cyrodiil is a huge place.

6. Ballgroups have been nerfed a bajillion times and you guys still complain any time someone in a group kills you and claim theyre some kind of exploiting ballgroup. Group play could get nerfed into the ground to the point of unplayability, players made so they can only heal or shield themself, etc, and once everyone is just a solo zergling shooting siege at each other, you guys would still find reasons to complain that things are broken or are exploits.

I'll go out of my way to hunt and kill a ball group anytime. I usually fail. However breaking down an organized group and then finally mopping them up in Grey Host is exhilarating. I'll see you out there...

Luneca · 11:09AM

A. Anyone that claims ball groups have been nerfed forgets the part where the buffs first benefit ball groups most, then the nerfs harm players that are not grouped most. Meaning that it's a net nerf to people that are not organized, pretending otherwise is just silly. Ballgroups have NEVER not had the advantage. Claiming otherwise is denying reality

B. Ballgroup players are not any better than non-ball group players. I'ver experienced them all on PC NA and watched them wipe. What players that get bombed fail to do is usually have enough healing to counter the bombing and offensive potential of a group.

The way the game works when played "optimally" is that you play in phases alternating defense and offense, this is true even in a 1v1. In this game, there is NO WAY to have both offense and defense in the same window (except with Corrosive, which is why it needs a nerf btw. Cloak/Invis let you control this offensive-defensive phasing completely which is also why it's the target of complaints; streak lets you get away or do both as well, which is why it is a target of complaints as well).

That means a ball is most vulnerable to being destroyed when they are on the offensive. What it also means is that if you have a healer that can outdo the ball's burst damage then those on your side oraganized or not just have to push offense (and yes this is possible, I do it all the time for all the ball groups I've seen on PC NA and PC EU). Time stop, negate, siege, and just focusing on one peson in general that's the weak link will wipe them.

Problem is that many people on the game do not do that. They don't fire siege; and I have no clue what runs in their mind, but they don't defend esp. a certain faction on PC NA Greyhost that gets farmed repeatedly.

C.You can actually kill or significantly harm ball groups alone. Just fire siege. Not even joking, I am serious. It might look like it's doing nothing unless you have 4x coldfires or lightning ballistae but it IS doing something.

--

That's not to say that I don't think ball groups are ridiculous, but they are not as powerful as they seem unless stacking poor mechanics that we can discuss on the forums and get nerfed or give feedback about before players start abusing it enmasse. But none of the ball groups have done what they could be doing to really be menacing, which is a good thing.

I don't think ballgroups really add much to the game, esp. considering most are running long before the other factions have equivalent population and getting the emp and scrolls or otherwise stacking in a faction stack. But at that point, when stcked with a faction, what difference does it make being in a group or not anyway?

At the end of the day, the nerf that will harm ball groups will ultimately harm players outside of them and never make up for the relative power difference between a group and solo players. The main difference usually being that a group has healing or a dedicated healer, where solo or ungrouped players will lack that.

And even if they did have a healer, not all healers are the same and it takes one able to block a ball groups offensive pressure completely for the players on the opposing end of a ball groups to be able to actually have a chance at winning. On PC NA there aren't many healers capable of doing that, and those that are capable are known and going to get focused by the ball group (and my siege).

Major_Mangle · 11:37AM

I think the adequate solution is to bring back old Azureblight and allow it to scale against players again. The fit that was thrown from the ballgroup "community" around Azureblight was proof enough that most of them didn´t want a challenge in PvP and the moment people took their advice to "adapt", they couldn´t cope with it. The best part about the set was that it was one of few cases where it was better against ballgroups than used by them, and it required a bit of coordination and optimization from a group using it for it to be truly effective.

So ye, bring back Azureblight again

Four_Fingers · 1:19PM

They should make something like battlegrounds for people that don't want to fight groups, oh wait...
Maybe they should add a solo arena or make grouping mandatory in GH.
Or better yet just leave it alone.

DarkStrifeYT · 1:24PM

man if only there were sets and abilities that took out groups that weren't nerfed to oblivion that dealt with ball groups

BardokRedSnow · 1:26PM

Major_Mangle wrote: »

I think the adequate solution is to bring back old Azureblight and allow it to scale against players again. The fit that was thrown from the ballgroup "community" around Azureblight was proof enough that most of them didn´t want a challenge in PvP and the moment people took their advice to "adapt", they couldn´t cope with it. The best part about the set was that it was one of few cases where it was better against ballgroups than used by them, and it required a bit of coordination and optimization from a group using it for it to be truly effective.

So ye, bring back Azureblight again

Preach, and plaguebreak going back to the way it was. It was a good counter to cleanse abuse and balls, that zergs also got hit by it too isnt a bad thing. I'd rather deal with getting blown up occasionally by my faction reminding me not to stack than ballgroups having very little counter as is.

Every time we get a tool to fight them its nerfed because of these forums and their flooding them in droves. Most pvpers dont come here but ballgroupers definitely do, and zos listens to them.

Four_Fingers · 1:38PM

Don't know why you still called them "Ball Groups" we haven't played that close together since the "Destro Train" days.
We do follow crown and stay in range of the healers but not so close as to get blown up by certain sets.

BioBitter100 · 2:00PM

Sluggy wrote: »

I'm not sure you realize that you are arguing with me from the same side of the field on this one.

Ah, yeah wasn´t 100% sure how you meant it.

PoveusRonin wrote: »

Imagine being new to PvP. Most older games have a difficult entry level for new players but this one takes the cake.

Yeah forget it xD even to this day I sometimes meet people with builds where I just get obliterated into nothing without really understanding what happened or how they did what they did, after playing ESO for 10 years lol. That´s why all the new players flock to the mega zerg guilds while all the more hardcore players start playing in ballgroups.

CannedChicken wrote: »

From what I've seen, it's really the 12-man groups, and maybe 11-man groups, that create the extreme shielding problem. Smaller groups can still stack shields, but they don't have nearly the same number of players constantly feeding shields into each other, and they can actually die fairly easily.

I think that's largely because these 12-man groups really only need a few actual damage dealers to put out enough pressure. Once they have 3–4 people focused on damage, they can fill the rest of the group with support and shield-focused players, which gives them an enormous amount of defensive utility without sacrificing much offensive pressure. That's why the problem becomes so much more pronounced at 11–12 players.

Nah, from my experience on Pc Eu not really. we have a lot of smallscale groups with ~5 people that become borderline unkillable. Yesterday me and 2 friends got chased by a group of 5 dks with a shieldbot with 60k hp, using guard on someone and constant 10k+ shield on everyone. Shields are out of hand regardless of group size.

Major_Mangle wrote: »

I think the adequate solution is to bring back old Azureblight and allow it to scale against players again. The fit that was thrown from the ballgroup "community" around Azureblight was proof enough that most of them didn´t want a challenge in PvP and the moment people took their advice to "adapt", they couldn´t cope with it. The best part about the set was that it was one of few cases where it was better against ballgroups than used by them, and it required a bit of coordination and optimization from a group using it for it to be truly effective.

So ye, bring back Azureblight again

Yeah Azureblight was the most meaningful way a solo player ever could do something against a ball. I liked using it but I think the calculations were also pretty heavy on the server. Not that it matters with all spamming of the balls themselves.

NovelliESO · 2:47PM

JohnRingo wrote: »

LoganSpencer1 wrote: »

1: There are like maybe 5 actual organized ballgroups that play the game actively, and they play in very small time slots of about 2 hours. Saying pvp is "nothing but ballgroups" or that the game is dying when it has queues of 100+ every night are wild exaggerations.

2: Most of the decent groups in this game spend hours analyzing comps, adjusting sets and abilities, pouring over logs to make sure they are playing how they think is optimal. No actually decent groups are just slapping things together and grouping up with random stuff and are suddenly taking on the entire server like you guys make it out to sound like.

3. You SHOULDNT be able to kill people who do the above^^^, are coordinated, optimized, and in comms together as a solo player or unorganized group. Complaining that you cant kill groups like that as a solo player who has probably never even looked at a log or played organized ESO, whether pve or pvp, will never cease to be an asinine argument.

4. If strong groups like this didnt exist, it would remove so much variety and skill ceiling from the game, and it would be reduced to a bunch of zergs just shooting siege at each other endlessly, keep fights would never end, it would just be boring.

5. You dont even have to fight ballgroups. Ignore them and go do something else. Cyrodiil is a huge place.

6. Ballgroups have been nerfed a bajillion times and you guys still complain any time someone in a group kills you and claim theyre some kind of exploiting ballgroup. Group play could get nerfed into the ground to the point of unplayability, players made so they can only heal or shield themself, etc, and once everyone is just a solo zergling shooting siege at each other, you guys would still find reasons to complain that things are broken or are exploits.

I'll go out of my way to hunt and kill a ball group anytime. I usually fail. However breaking down an organized group and then finally mopping them up in Grey Host is exhilarating. I'll see you out there...

This is fine, but like I mentioned earlier this is usually the issue with players who get killed by ballgroups. If you attempt to kill one just be prepared to get killed by them. Plenty of people will do the same and then complain as if, just because they have less people, they should be allowed to endlessly attempt to kill players in the group without any repercussions.

Also, plaguebreak is still perfectly fine against ballgroups, anyone who tells you otherwise doesn't play the game. The vast majority of groups above 6 still refuse to run purge because of it, the internal per target cooldown isn't as strong as people think it is when you can just apply it to a different target in the group.

SerafinaWaterstar · 4:40PM

The shields are ridiculous. Have seen bgs hit with coldfire plus meatbag plus ballista plus group damage and….nothing.

But do agree pvpers need better tactics. Stop chasing high health/shield dks into towers. Just stand outside waiting & they’ll either fight, or more likely run away.

Learn how to use siege. It’s a valid playstyle against some enemies. Not everyone has it in them to be a 1 v x pvp god. And sieges help. Its one of the main ways I support my faction - the big boys & gals can go fight mano a mano whilst I weaken them. Better than me trying to fight & just eating dirt.