AOE Caps aren't the reason that Zerg+Impulse is "I Win."

Raeder

It isn't the damage these groups do that is the problem so much as it is the fact that these players have stacked light armor and yet are still able to use Immovable.

Ever notice how you can't slow these groups at all? Or how Volcanic Rune rarely works? It's because they are using Immovable and it's morphs and since they are focused on Magicka, they have the Stamina to keep it up 100% of the time.

http://esohead.com/skills/29552-immovable

We all know that Light armor is by far the best armor combination. While ZOS is going to some length to address that in 1.3, it will not address the zergballing+Impulse spam.

And before people even say it. Negate is not a valid counter to this kind of thing because the zergball just moves out of it and keeps wrecking, and it is an 200 ultimate that only one class has.

ZOS needs to change the Armor skills so that you must be wearing 5 or more of that type of armor in order to use them.

This would make it much harder to do what these groups do, as much of their "strategy" is based on the fact that they need to wear 5 or more light armor because their strategy relies on Magicka for damage output.

Another solution would be to increase the damage that various siege engines do based on how many targets they hit. These groups should take 25% damage instantly when hit with a giant rock, and this would go a long way to breaking up the groups without a return to the DK + Batswarm (as an aside, it seems batswarm is becoming a problem again, but that is another subject) stuff we endured several months ago.

A third solution would be to make Caltrops and perhaps Volcanic Rune effect everyone, no matter what.

PS. ZOS... it's getting bad out there with the Impulse spam. Your subscribers, including myself, are just logging off when they encounter it.

KDSProm

I think you are on the wrong path here....

From the way you formulate I'm positive that after ZOS will do all you suggested you would than request the removal of all AoE skill and after they implement that as well your request will be:

"Please remove the open world pvp as it allows too many people to make a pain train and focus fire their targets. I would like to have Instanced PvP and ideally about 10 types of Arena's game play for 1v1."

In stead of crying your way out of the game you could work your way into finding a decent group to play with. I promise it will make you feel less miserable

yours,

Zadian

KDSProm wrote: »

I think you are on the wrong path here....
…

Reading all the disscussions about zergballing and AoE caps I'm wondering why removing the AoE cap would help and make the game more balanced.
Removing the AoE cap simply removes the need for large zergs since a few people can be as effective as a large one. It makes AoEs more effective in a game that already heavily relies on AoEs.

Maybe I'm missing something, but I fail to see why removing the AoE cap would make the game more balanced or fun. I don't see that much of a difference between 24 people running around spamming AoEs and 4-6 people running around spamming AoEs.

I agree with the OP that changes to Immovable would be a small step in the right direction. A lot of other balancing changes will be needed. Currently light armor and AoE is simply the best setup for ESO. If almost everybody uses light armor and staff, then something is obviously out of balance and removing the AoE cap won't change that. It will make it worse.

ToRelax

Raeder wrote: »

ZOS needs to change the Armor skills so that you must be wearing 5 or more of that type of armor in order to use them.

It's one of the points that must be adressed.

In addition you could give certain siege weapons an AoE-knockback. Should make them far more useful against zergballs.

sevcik.miroslaveb17_ESO

AOE is what will lead this game to it's shutdown imho.

It has nothing to do with TES and is totaly OP when stacked in group + the worst feature of them all... It IS instant cast!

I am starting to think that PvP development team was smoking some good stuff while creating skills.

ESO PvP is gun and run in group. It is like playing unreal tournament in cloth and with stick instead of minigun.

Dumb dumb and boring as hell. For sure. Not worth even 1 usd per month.

Raeder

KDSProm wrote: »

I think you are on the wrong path here....

From the way you formulate I'm positive that after ZOS will do all you suggested you would than request the removal of all AoE skill and after they implement that as well your request will be:

"Please remove the open world pvp as it allows too many people to make a pain train and focus fire their targets. I would like to have Instanced PvP and ideally about 10 types of Arena's game play for 1v1."

In stead of crying your way out of the game you could work your way into finding a decent group to play with. I promise it will make you feel less miserable

yours,

I should be able to break up a tightly packed group of players with Volcanic Rune or some other knockdown or slow them with Caltrops, but that is impossible at the moment.

It has nothing to do with being organized and everything to do with how the game is currently balanced around favoring Magicka based builds. The bread and butter of a Magicka based build is 5 or more light armor pieces. In PvP, AOE does win in group battles, but it isn't balanced or fair to allow people to do this kind of damage while being immune to any of the multitude of ways that ZOS put into the game that is meant to stop these zergs.

Like weapon skills, armor skills should be tied to what you currently have equipped.

There's no reason that this isn't the case currently.

Rudyard

There are several other issues that are contributing to this zergball effect:

1) The ability to stack Barrier and it's two morphs, Reviving Barrier and Replenishing Barrier.

2) The ability to prime ultimates through the use of Equilibrium and any healing skill. This is basically lowering your health on purpose so that allies can heal you and gain ultimates for doing so.

Remove those two capacities and these clusters will not be so strong.

c0rp

Its not hard to figure out people. If a zergball of 50 people are running around like idiots pressing the same button over and over they are unkillable because any INCOMING AOE into the zerg ball is going to hit 6 people out of that 50..

Anyone thinking that zerg balls are not a product of AoE caps is either 1) clueless or 2) a zerg baller in disguise.

hamon

KDSProm wrote: »

I think you are on the wrong path here....

From the way you formulate I'm positive that after ZOS will do all you suggested you would than request the removal of all AoE skill and after they implement that as well your request will be:

"Please remove the open world pvp as it allows too many people to make a pain train and focus fire their targets. I would like to have Instanced PvP and ideally about 10 types of Arena's game play for 1v1."

In stead of crying your way out of the game you could work your way into finding a decent group to play with. I promise it will make you feel less miserable

yours,

focus fire? it wouldnt be so bad if the zerg balls had to actually employ a little skill and focus fire.. but tell me how you focus fire a PB-AOE? it doesnt need aimed and hits everything in a 360 radius. so if by focus fire you mean run into folk who cant stop you and keep spamming one button. I think your perception of focus fire is a little skewed

krim

What else are these zerg groups doing? I thought it was just impulse, and now they are using immovable too. Lets just remove or change everything these people use from the game. We need to keep pushing for a more WoW like feel because this game is just way to simple. We should also get rid of the second wep bar we only need one. Am i right................

AbraXuSeXile

With unlimited rezzes, trains are needed. You would quit due to stress and anger of pugs.

Kill the train, kill the game.

Zadian

c0rp wrote: »

Its not hard to figure out people. If a zergball of 50 people are running around like idiots pressing the same button over and over they are unkillable because any INCOMING AOE into the zerg ball is going to hit 6 people out of that 50..
…

And if you remove the AoE cap the 50 people will still very hard to kill since they probably have a few healers. Removing the AoE cap doesn't solve the cause of zergballs, it's just a cure for a symptom and it's a cure that results in more problems.

Remove Immovable form light armor users and it will become much easier to break up a zergball.

Removing the AoE cap will simply melee even more useless.

SBR_QuorTek

Removing the AOE cap make the game more vulnerable to open AOE exploits when skills break for that, that is the reason it should never be implented.

Being forced to wear 5 pieces of heavy armor to use for an instance immoveable would be a good choice.

Keep in mind to not forget rapid maneuver as well, it should not buff the group with all the immunities but only player, the speed buff can be applied to all though.

It is a fix of alot of minor things really, add target of target feature having scouts out looking and it working in a way that you have to for being able to AOE to physically having targetted the player you want to put it on and which would hit his close friends as well, by that making scouting actual a usefull thing as well, being like hey they all target this guy.. run away from him and let him be the fox... then spread out and the zerg would be confused due to, too many targets targetted.

Anyhow it would create a more innovative and creative gameplay doing it like that.... and less follow the leader all the time.

Gecko

Zadian wrote: »

And if you remove the AoE cap the 50 people will still very hard to kill since they probably have a few healers. Removing the AoE cap doesn't solve the cause of zergballs, it's just a cure for a symptom and it's a cure that results in more problems.

Remove Immovable form light armor users and it will become much easier to break up a zergball.

Removing the AoE cap will simply melee even more useless.

The aoe caps make it so the damage randomly gets split. So not only do you only hit 6 people out of 50, two different aoes could hit 6 totally different people, so the damage is spread out. If you had no aoe caps, it would be hard to heal, it would be like all 50 people would be getting hit. A small group could time the aoes and take out a decent sized group. Even if heals were hitting everyone, it would still force people to spread out and eliminate zergballs. The reason healing keeps up now is because of the random way the damage is split up. The hots and heals simply tick you back up slowly, since the probability of getting hit fast enough to overwhelm them is considerably lower in a ball because of the random 6 factor.

Melee would not be more useless. You would be able to pick off a lot more targets when they are spread out and not in a ball aoeing you down than what is done now. Melee is useless now because of the zergballing. No one in their right mind tries to melee a zergball. only 2 or 3 people go in, they get hit by the aoe from that entire group. Spreading out that group would make melee less suicidal.

Also, I would like to see the armor skills require you to be wearing a certain number of pieces of that armor as well.

Cody

it would definitely help. impulse trains tick me off as well. I just avoid them. iv even nearly left a keep battle due to them. just ganking on the roads for me!!!!!

SBR_QuorTek

NookyZooky wrote: »

it would definitely help. impulse trains tick me off as well. I just avoid them. iv even nearly left a keep battle due to them. just ganking on the roads for me!!!!!

That is why we need to look at the alternatives to it, there is no magic I FIX button in the developers inventory, some of the examples I mentioned would prove quite usefull though.... basically preventing to just being able to push it out without having targetted something, then the button would just be greyed out untill close enough on player selected target.

Bramir

AbraXuSeXile wrote: »

With unlimited rezzes, trains are needed. You would quit due to stress and anger of pugs.

Kill the train, kill the game.

Astounding.

eliisra

Yeah let's blame the sad state of PvP on Immovable and light armour lol...

Let's completely ignore the fact that Impulse and Bat Swarm doesn't require any tricky targeting or focusing, are insta-cast and deals high 360° AoE dmg, can be cast while blocking (immune to cc regardless of Immovable). That the trains are embedded in x3 Barriers, Rapid Manoeuvre and designated purgers.

Instead lets nerf Immovable so that small groups and soloers will stay cc'ed for life and always dies when ambushed. God knows the cc in this game is already a bloody nuisance. Immovable is the only thing that makes it bearable, if you consider the ridiculous burst dmg combined with the even more ridiculous cost of a cc break.

Raeder

krim wrote: »

What else are these zerg groups doing? I thought it was just impulse, and now they are using immovable too. Lets just remove or change everything these people use from the game. We need to keep pushing for a more WoW like feel because this game is just way to simple. We should also get rid of the second wep bar we only need one. Am i right................

Obvious hyperbole is obvious. While you're at it, why don't we make it so that you can use any weapon skill in the game regardless of what you have equipped, as that makes about as much sense as allowing anyone to use an Armor skill.

Halrloprillalar

If you don't think aoe caps cause zergs, you don't understand how the game mechanics work

Immovable also doesn't stop roots.

krim

Raeder wrote: »

krim wrote: »

What else are these zerg groups doing? I thought it was just impulse, and now they are using immovable too. Lets just remove or change everything these people use from the game. We need to keep pushing for a more WoW like feel because this game is just way to simple. We should also get rid of the second wep bar we only need one. Am i right................

Obvious hyperbole is obvious. While you're at it, why don't we make it so that you can use any weapon skill in the game regardless of what you have equipped, as that makes about as much sense as allowing anyone to use an Armor skill.

You know what your rightttttttttttttttttttttttttt. It such a big deal im quitting until light armor users cant use an 8 second buff that they have to be on top of reapplying to counter knockdown spams and negates. We need to make the game easier for everyone!!!

Raeder

Halrloprillalar wrote: »

If you don't think aoe caps cause zergs, you don't understand how the game mechanics work

Immovable also doesn't stop roots.

As far as I know there is no mass AOE root in this game except the DK Standard which requires someone to trigger shackle, and again requires an ultimate use. So I don't know of any non-ultimate roots, only single target.

There would need to be an AOE root for it to break up these groups.

I've seen enough PvP in this game, and seen enough battles to know that breaking up rushes with Caltrops/Veil of Blades/Volcanic Rune works when the group is susceptible to it.

But with Immovable, they are not.

Raeder

eliisra wrote: »

Yeah let's blame the sad state of PvP on Immovable and light armour lol...

Let's completely ignore the fact that Impulse and Bat Swarm doesn't require any tricky targeting or focusing, are insta-cast and deals high 360° AoE dmg, can be cast while blocking (immune to cc regardless of Immovable). That the trains are embedded in x3 Barriers, Rapid Manoeuvre and designated purgers.

Instead lets nerf Immovable so that small groups and soloers will stay cc'ed for life and always dies when ambushed. God knows the cc in this game is already a bloody nuisance. Immovable is the only thing that makes it bearable, if you consider the ridiculous burst dmg combined with the even more ridiculous cost of a cc break.

You're not nerfing Immovable, you are rebalancing light armor. We all know that light armor is the BEST armor set in the game because the most powerful skills in the game cost Magicka.

It's a tradeoff. Either you do high damage, but are CCable, or you do lower damage and are immune to it (ie a tank vs DPS).

quakedawg_ESO

Players cry because they feel 1 button is causing their grief. Low and behold it is actually 2?!?!?

This is a travesty!

Sublime

There are a couple of core components for bomb squads:

- CC immunity/resistance, i.e. Immovable, Purge, Retreating Maneuver (the last two because they are aoe cleanses)
- Teamwork (obviously)
- AOE spells, healing spells included (cleanses might go under this category as well)

Now you have to differentiate between bomb squads and zergs:

BS are imo the little balls consisting of 24 players running around and causing massive damage in an area with 8 meter radius (generally), they only ocassionally spread out, as for example while sieging. Sometimes there are two BS acting in coordination but its quite rare.

Zergs are a group of players roughly organized by clustering and some leadership. They gain there strength through numbers and do not act very objective focused.

Now in order to address the issue of Impulse and larger groups, nerfing or adjusting certain skills can make BS less viable since the are reliant on certain types of skills. It is however not possible to avoid the existence of larger formations since, zergs are not reliant on certain types of skills. (You can also get zerged by Venom Arrows)

And while BS are the current way of PvP guilds to play the game, if you change the abilities they will simply adapt to the new patch and focus you down from 30m with 24 arrows instead of 8m with 24 pulsars. They would however be easier to kill.

[All tested through experience. Call me a zerg baller if you wish, its my favourite way to play the game.]

SBR_QuorTek

Also for the multi massive no AOE cap people forget the classes that is not that AOE heavy, so it would make us run into another problem if caps where given free.

Teargrants

Ya, I was about to make another explanation of why aoe cap mechanics are the issue for the umpteenth time, but there really isn't much point it seems. So many are just going around with circular arguments as if only the last handfull of posts exist on the issue - or they just aren't reading through the threads.

I'm reminded of my prediction when all the aoe threads popped up.

Kirsika wrote: »

You're not gonna get much good discussion about the aoe cap anymore. Most of the players who came here because the game was marketed as "like DAoC (no aoe cap hint hint)", and understood what the aoe cap would do, have left long ago.

Now out of the pvp'rs who remain, it's a much smaller proportion of them who understand how aoe cap makes the blob stackers invincible. Instead more are of the mindset of "no aoe cap would make aoe too strong", and even "current aoe is too strong" - which has a lot to do with not understanding how we are forced to counter blob trains now vs w/o an aoe cap. And then there's always the people who came from GW2 and see blob stacking as "the way it should be / end all be all of good tactics" (the ones who came to get away from GW2 have mostly left, alas).

I'd like to see this thread prove me wrong, but from the direction aoe discussion's been going on the forums lately, this is what the trend appears to be.

Wish I was wrong.

Durham

Sublime wrote: »

There are a couple of core components for bomb squads:

- CC immunity/resistance, i.e. Immovable, Purge, Retreating Maneuver (the last two because they are aoe cleanses)
- Teamwork (obviously)
- AOE spells, healing spells included (cleanses might go under this category as well)

Now you have to differentiate between bomb squads and zergs:

BS are imo the little balls consisting of 24 players running around and causing massive damage in an area with 8 meter radius (generally), they only ocassionally spread out, as for example while sieging. Sometimes there are two BS acting in coordination but its quite rare.

Zergs are a group of players roughly organized by clustering and some leadership. They gain there strength through numbers and do not act very objective focused.

Now in order to address the issue of Impulse and larger groups, nerfing or adjusting certain skills can make BS less viable since the are reliant on certain types of skills. It is however not possible to avoid the existence of larger formations since, zergs are not reliant on certain types of skills. (You can also get zerged by Venom Arrows)

And while BS are the current way of PvP guilds to play the game, if you change the abilities they will simply adapt to the new patch and focus you down from 30m with 24 arrows instead of 8m with 24 pulsars. They would however be easier to kill.

[All tested through experience. Call me a zerg baller if you wish, its my favourite way to play the game.]

If they remove caps and take immovable and you stay in your ball ... you will be crushed DAoC is a perfect example of this mechanic....

Durham

eliisra wrote: »

Yeah let's blame the sad state of PvP on Immovable and light armour lol...

Let's completely ignore the fact that Impulse and Bat Swarm doesn't require any tricky targeting or focusing, are insta-cast and deals high 360° AoE dmg, can be cast while blocking (immune to cc regardless of Immovable). That the trains are embedded in x3 Barriers, Rapid Manoeuvre and designated purgers.

Instead lets nerf Immovable so that small groups and soloers will stay cc'ed for life and always dies when ambushed. God knows the cc in this game is already a bloody nuisance. Immovable is the only thing that makes it bearable, if you consider the ridiculous burst dmg combined with the even more ridiculous cost of a cc break.

Its not a nerf... its a heavy ability you should have to wear heavy to use it...

Kypho

As i said. 600+ dmg with impulse/pulsar per man, is insane. cap or not, its insane. No cap means the train will have a real formation and spam it more, and killing more ppl. So they wont balling up, instead they will make a big circle to spam OP AOE dmg.
If ppl say DK standard doing too much dmg, then why not complain about OP AOE dmg what does 2-3 times more than standard DoT or Swarm?

Zadian

Gecko wrote: »

… A small group could time the aoes and take out a decent sized group. …

Do I understand you correctly that you want the AoE cap removed to make it possible to make effective suicide attacks on zergballs? Since the small group would still get hit by the whole AoE of the zergball and the AoEs would be more effective without cap if the attacking group is larger than 6 people. Such an attack could kill some (depending on how the heal works after an AoE cap removal) of the zergball but would result in the attacking group to be wiped out.

Isn't this trading large zergballs with smaller zergballs/aoe spamming groups?

Not taking into account that some build in ESO can be made very, very durable - give them AoE that is even more effective and I think we will get a huge problem.

In Keeps AoEs without cap could become very, very powerful since there is almost no way to escape the AoE. I certainly don't want a few AoE spamming attackers being able to wipe out entire keeps with lots of people defending.

I don't think that this is a good way to balance the game and make it more fun. Like many others I want zergballs to be less effective, but I don't see how making AoE even more effective would help making the game more fun.

Maybe a change the way the healing works would be more helpful. How about better direct heals with the resto staff and less completely random HoTs - this would make small groups more effective and make spamming Hots less effective. Zergballs would get problems with heals since aiming at those who need healing is very difficult if not impossible in a zergball. Just an idea.