Has Kagrenac's Hope Become the 2.1 Version of Forward Camps?

Zheg

For full disclosure, I was never a fan of forward camps as I felt they enabled players to pvp sloppily and have almost zero consequences since they could just rez up 15 feet from the fight and join the battle seconds after dying. But, this isn't a debate about the merits of forward camps. ZOS removed them for a reason, and while all I can do is guess, I'd say it's an educated guess that they were removed because forward camps tended to favor players with larger numbers and whoever was in a better position to have people peel off from the fight to make sure a fresh forward camp was put down. Death had little penalty.

With 2.1, sets were tweaked, and I think players are starting to finalize what the 2.1 meta will look like. In my experience so far, 2.1 is feeling very, very similar to the 1.1-1.4 meta when forward camps allowed the entire group that you wiped to respawn and bomb your backline 5 seconds later. The groups I've run with in pvp have had a quick rezzer that wore the set, but since 2.1 makes kag's hope the absolute best crafted set for spell damage, it seems like everyone and their mother runs this now.

The reduced time to kill tends to make group fights favor numbers more heavily now, as bad reaction time/calls can be compensated for by the extra heals/ultimates that having more numbers enables. By itself, this would be manageable - players are harder to kill, and it's harder to kill a larger group, but you can still accomplish it. However, when you combine this with how many people seem to be in kag's hope (whether people have just caught on that in 2.1's reduced TTK it's incredibly powerful to be able to rez quickly, or whether people are just running the set because it's the best crafted magicka dps set), the capacity to take on larger numbers begins to dwindle. It almost seems exponentially related to numbers - as soon as you reach a sweet spot of outnumbering the other side, it becomes very easy to have players peel off for literally 1 second and rez. Prior to 2.1, after wiping a group you needed to pay attention to anyone still left alive because if they weren't monitored they could rez up the entire group. In 2.1, I almost want to say preventing rezzes feels like it doesn't matter because it's a near impossible task when you're outnumbered and rezzes can literally be completed in 1 second. How many people can you be in melee range for and bashing at once while still doing sufficient dmg/heals to fight those that were still alive? Against larger numbers now, I find myself literally wondering, "do we camp the two groups that we just wiped so they don't get rezzed by the randoms running around with kag's hope, or do we push the objective and finish taking the keep/whatever" - realizing that doing so we will mean we have near-unbeatable numbers pouring in behind us in 10 seconds when everyone is rezzed up.

I know our group is still testing strategies and trying to figure out a way to combat the meta, and it certainly doesn't help that the majority of my faction seems to still be in IC on pop-locked campaigns when EP (and sometimes AD) are in regular Cyrodiil in almost full numbers, but I'd suggest to @ZOS_BrianWheeler to at least keep an eye on it in the event that this snowballs further and we're left with pseudo-forward camps running around in a crafted set. I'd certainly like to see what the fights are like with close to even numbers (maybe this is no longer a problem at that point?), but as things stand right now, I'd love for better tools to combat significantly larger numbers since prox det isn't sufficient for that purpose (and yes, I know everyone asks for this, and I'm not providing any suggestions, but I'd still like for more tools to be available). Our group discussed the addition of a rez sickness where your stats are temporarily diminished upon being rezzed, and that may end up being an interesting change that helps balance the scale and reward skilled play over numbers.

Again, I'd like to see what the fights look like when we have more even numbers across the board and everyone is out of IC - as kag's hope may not even matter at that point, but as it stands now, after regularly fighting 2-3 times our number in Trueflame NA PC (and seeing similar fights on Azura's), it's quickly getting old to see the name of someone you've already killed 5 times in a single engagement show up on your death recap

It's starting to feel like death has little penalty again.

Tallowby

As a crafter on Xbox One - after IC update over ~80% of crafting requests are this set

Master_Kas

They dont want kagernacs for the ressing bonus mostly. Its for the regen, health, max magicka and spelldamage. The ressing is just a perk.

Really now you want to nerf a set? Or stats when you res? You do know that you dont res with full resources?

Also even smaller groups can use this to res their allies faster.

Sallington

This set is exactly what an 8-trait set should be. Solid set bonuses, with an extra perk with the 5-piece.

Alcast

Battle Ressurection
Kragrenance Hope
Templar

=

Instares

Zheg

Master_Kas wrote: »

They dont want kagernacs for the ressing bonus mostly. Its for the regen, health, max magicka and spelldamage. The ressing is just a perk.

Really now you want to nerf a set? Or stats when you res? You do know that you dont res with full resources?

Also even smaller groups can use this to res their allies faster.

Did you read the post at all? No, didn't ask for a nerf. I asked for an eye to be kept on it, and said (twice) I'd like to see whether this is even an issue once the numbers are evened out.

Yes, smaller groups can use this to rez faster, and are, but the point being made was that larger numbers + kag's hope seems like the side with more numbers has their own mobile forward camps given how quickly they're re-entering the fight now. You can debate if you'd like, but it's pretty obvious that a smaller group with a few kag's hope won't mean diddly against a group with 2-times+ your numbers with even more kag's hope.

You may not rez with full resources, but they're back up to full in literally a few seconds, so that point is moot. And if a templar rezzed you, you have that much more stats returned.

IxSTALKERxI

Yeah rezzing is one of the major problems when fighting out numbered atm.

Another solution could be making soul gems harder to get. I find I always have 300 soul gems in my inventory and I never seem to run out. I don't ever buy any gems, I think the rewards for the worthy alone are more then enough to cover what I use. Could partly be because my AP gain : ally death ratio is quite good, so not sure if this is the case for everyone.

Less Gems entering the economy would stop people repeatedly rezzing each other at no expense.


Edit:

Inb4 'could also just be that you're always the one dying and not anyone else in the group' comment from one of my guildies

Minno

IxSTALKERxI wrote: »

Yeah rezzing is one of the major problems when fighting out numbered atm.

Another solution could be making soul gems harder to get. I find I always have 300 soul gems in my inventory and I never seem to run out. I don't ever buy any gems, I think the rewards for the worthy alone are more then enough to cover what I use. Could partly be because my AP gain : ally death ratio is quite good, so not sure if this is the case for everyone.

Less Gems entering the economy would stop people repeatedly rezzing each other at no expense.

Less gems the price will go up too reducing their use even further. If that's the correct solution, ZOS will need to balance the difficulty in getting gems against that.

Minno

Alcast wrote: »

Battle Ressurection
Kragrenance Hope
Templar

=

Instares

As a Templar, I enjoy that this makes up for our subpar pvp presence

Leandor

Wait, did I understand that right? It was a good bonus as long it was used only by coordinated groups with designated ressers to exacerbate their advantage but it's bad now that many use it? Makes sense.

Ezareth

I've always felt that this set was BS, for Templars especially.

I'm not a fan of battle ressing in general. It removes the penalty for dying and in group PvP having a templar running this set can get ressess off 100% of the time unless someone is just bashing them nonstop and then all they need to do is immovable/unstoppable and you can't even do that.

To be honest I think there should be a ress timer when you are PVP flagged of at *least* 30 seconds before you're able to be ressed. It is one of those things like ground oil, that while very effective and fun doesn't make any sense and is easy to exploit.

As an example, Cinn and I were fighting Ebonheart templar and 2 others he was grouped with in IC Sewers the other night in a close fight for a few minutes. In comes Mojican and his group of 2. Chaos ensues and I decided to switch targets to the two players Mojican was grouped with while Cinn kited Ebon's group around. I killed both players and turn back to help Cinn and Moj of course just starts ressing them. Before I can even get to him he has the first guy ressed and then even though I'm spamming bash on him he resses the second player through repeated bashes because he's either running an unstoppable pot or immovable pot. Cinn dies and I die shortly after. In this case, the players who had the performed the best were not rewarded at all for killing other players and the guys who died ended up being rewarded.

"Battle ressing" in general is just a stupid mechanic that needs something to balance it further so that making mistakes is actually penalized and so that death has meaning.

eliisra

Well, it's probably in combination with other things.

Zerg buffs, higher TTK, passives and cloak "fix", for example.

Fights never end, because a zerg can revive faster than any smaller force can dps. There's no way you can guard all dead bodies when outnumbered. Always a dozen Kagrenac's Hope NB's cloaking around getting people up in 2 seconds, popping like mushrooms.

Than there's the set together with other passives. With this set and Battle Resurrection on NB, I can revive a player while cloaked the entire duration. Intended? With this set on templar+ full passives, I revive so fast that interrupts are futile. Can also pop new 17 seconds invisi potion and revive everyone nearby before it runs out.

But not all is bad. At least you get bigger def/attack ticks now, if you actually win lol.

Ezareth

eliisra wrote: »

Well, it's probably in combination with other things.

Zerg buffs, higher TTK, passives and cloak "fix", for example.

Fights never end, because a zerg can revive faster than any smaller force can dps. There's no way you can guard all dead bodies when outnumbered. Always a dozen Kagrenac's Hope NB's cloaking around getting people up in 2 seconds, popping like mushrooms.

Than there's the set together with other passives. With this set and Battle Resurrection on NB, I can revive a player while cloaked the entire duration. Intended? With this set on templar+ full passives, I revive so fast that interrupts are futile. Can also pop new 17 seconds invisi potion and revive everyone nearby before it runs out.

But not all is bad. At least you get bigger def/attack ticks now, if you actually win lol.

Yeah I've lost so many amazing battles with Cinn 2 v 10ing or so where we literally kill 6 of them only to have the remaining four just stop attacking and everyone goes into battle ress formation and 2 people can't stop 4 people from ressing everyone else back up.

I've had fights in IC sewers against PvE zergs that were the same. It's like the moment someone dies 1 or 2 people just run to them and start ressing them. If you are already fighting outnumbered, standing on everyones corpses while trying to kill everyone else is just not possible.

Zheg

Leandor wrote: »

Wait, did I understand that right? It was a good bonus as long it was used only by coordinated groups with designated ressers to exacerbate their advantage but it's bad now that many use it? Makes sense.

No, you didn't understand right, keep trying though, reading comprehension ends up being a useful skill in real life.

Kag's hope is in a good place on it's own. The (potential) problem comes from increased TTK + kag's hope + cyro rez passives + templar passives/cloak. And as I've said now (for the third time thus far), these are my early impressions of pvp fights in 2.1, and I'd like to see whether this is an issue that's even still present when the populations are balanced. But as of right now, rezzing in cyrodiil needs to have a close eye kept on it in my opinion because of how slow ZOS is sometimes to make fixes/tweaks when there's actually a need to do so.

Ezareth

Solutions that I can think of:

Make it so that battle ressing is always 100% interruptable, it is too powerful of an ability to be unable to counter

Either add a ress timer of 30 seconds OR make it so that if you are bashed/interrupted while battle ressing you can no longer battle ress until you're out of combat.

Master_Kas

Zheg wrote: »

Master_Kas wrote: »

They dont want kagernacs for the ressing bonus mostly. Its for the regen, health, max magicka and spelldamage. The ressing is just a perk.

Really now you want to nerf a set? Or stats when you res? You do know that you dont res with full resources?

Also even smaller groups can use this to res their allies faster.

Did you read the post at all? No, didn't ask for a nerf. I asked for an eye to be kept on it, and said (twice) I'd like to see whether this is even an issue once the numbers are evened out.

Yes, smaller groups can use this to rez faster, and are, but the point being made was that larger numbers + kag's hope seems like the side with more numbers has their own mobile forward camps given how quickly they're re-entering the fight now. You can debate if you'd like, but it's pretty obvious that a smaller group with a few kag's hope won't mean diddly against a group with 2-times+ your numbers with even more kag's hope.

You may not rez with full resources, but they're back up to full in literally a few seconds, so that point is moot. And if a templar rezzed you, you have that much more stats returned.

Sigh, it's a 8 trait set. I'm happy to see it being used.
There are other way more important things which favours higher numbers-groups which need to be look at.
This set is not one of them imo.

For example:
AoE-cap
Purge spam
Rapid manouvers
Barrier
Non-dynamic ultigain.

Far more important for small group vs zergs than a 5 piece set which lets you res faster. But nvm carry on.

Alcast

Minno wrote: »

Alcast wrote: »

Battle Ressurection
Kragrenance Hope
Templar

=

Instares

As a Templar, I enjoy that this makes up for our subpar pvp presence

Haha ye, try to kill a group of 5 templars having all those bonuses. Its also a way of "recoverying Resources" lol

IxSTALKERxI

Maybe Dk's can be useful in pvp afterall...

They can run around spamming deep breath (aoe interrupt)

Zheg

Master_Kas wrote: »

Zheg wrote: »

Master_Kas wrote: »

They dont want kagernacs for the ressing bonus mostly. Its for the regen, health, max magicka and spelldamage. The ressing is just a perk.

Really now you want to nerf a set? Or stats when you res? You do know that you dont res with full resources?

Also even smaller groups can use this to res their allies faster.

Did you read the post at all? No, didn't ask for a nerf. I asked for an eye to be kept on it, and said (twice) I'd like to see whether this is even an issue once the numbers are evened out.

Yes, smaller groups can use this to rez faster, and are, but the point being made was that larger numbers + kag's hope seems like the side with more numbers has their own mobile forward camps given how quickly they're re-entering the fight now. You can debate if you'd like, but it's pretty obvious that a smaller group with a few kag's hope won't mean diddly against a group with 2-times+ your numbers with even more kag's hope.

You may not rez with full resources, but they're back up to full in literally a few seconds, so that point is moot. And if a templar rezzed you, you have that much more stats returned.

Sigh, it's a 8 trait set. I'm happy to see it being used.
There are other way more important things which favours higher numbers-groups which need to be look at.
This set is not one of them imo.

For example:
AoE-cap
Purge spam
Rapid manouvers
Barrier
Non-dynamic ultigain.

Far more important for small group vs zergs than a 5 piece set which lets you res faster.

Any potential fixes don't need to be made to the set itself (in fact, given that most people farmed and made v16 gold versions of the set, it'd be nice if it actually remained a good set). Tweaks can be made to the cyro passives, rez mechanics, and some kind of debuff after rezzes.

I'd love if the rest of the crafted sets were on the same level of usefulness. Ultimately, when everyone starts running the same thing (dual sharpened maces, nirnhoned, putting immovable on your bar pre-1.5, etc.) it points to an underlying bug or imbalance that needs to be addressed. So, again, it doesn't necessarily mean the set itself needs to be nerfed.

Joy_Division

Leandor wrote: »

Wait, did I understand that right? It was a good bonus as long it was used only by coordinated groups with designated ressers to exacerbate their advantage but it's bad now that many use it? Makes sense.

No, you didn't understand it right. These are *not* designated ressers. They just happen to be able to fast rez because ZoS decided to marry the best spellpower DPS set with best healer utility power. The OP also didn't say it was necessarily "bad," just that it was yet another change ZoS instituted that will more often favor larger groups over smaller ones.

bosmern_ESO

People have been running kags hope since they took out Forward camps. Templar + kags hope + support level 10 (battle res) = 2 second ressing.

Leandor

Zheg wrote: »

Leandor wrote: »

Wait, did I understand that right? It was a good bonus as long it was used only by coordinated groups with designated ressers to exacerbate their advantage but it's bad now that many use it? Makes sense.

No, you didn't understand right, keep trying though, reading comprehension ends up being a useful skill in real life.

Kag's hope is in a good place on it's own. The (potential) problem comes from increased TTK + kag's hope + cyro rez passives + templar passives/cloak. And as I've said now (for the third time thus far), these are my early impressions of pvp fights in 2.1, and I'd like to see whether this is an issue that's even still present when the populations are balanced. But as of right now, rezzing in cyrodiil needs to have a close eye kept on it in my opinion because of how slow ZOS is sometimes to make fixes/tweaks when there's actually a need to do so.

Ah, I did get it right.

IxSTALKERxI

Ezareth wrote: »

Solutions that I can think of:

Make it so that battle ressing is always 100% interruptable, it is too powerful of an ability to be unable to counter

Either add a ress timer of 30 seconds OR make it so that if you are bashed/interrupted while battle ressing you can no longer battle ress until you're out of combat.

I like these idea's. The last idea though give it a fixed cooldown, don't base it off exiting combat coz we all know how buggy that can be.

frozywozy

Alcast wrote: »

Battle Ressurection
Kragrenance Hope
Templar

=

Instares

In EP, we call it the Jesus Touch.

Two solutions :

1) Add a resurrection sickness
2) Add a battle-resurrection skill into Soul Magic and put a 10 minutes cooldown on it

Derra

The solution to combat rezzing is rez sickness with like 50% reduced stats for a minute after you get resurrected.

Maulkin

We're getting 1 player in our small group to be a batplar with kag set. His char is new though so it's a bit of a grind to get the Battle Resurrection passive from Support line.

But when he's done you have 1.5" per resurrection and a 6" ultimate that makes you untargetable. In that time you can rez 2 players easy out of a 5 man group and there's nothing the opposition can do about it. On top of rezing them with full HP (another part of Templar passive Master Ritualist) and a 10k damage shield thanks to CS passive Revival (Lord tree).

We're tempted for max trolling to have every one else run the Phoenix set too, but that would be only for poops and giggles

Ryuho

Master_Kas wrote: »

They dont want kagernacs for the ressing bonus mostly. Its for the regen, health, max magicka and spelldamage. The ressing is just a perk.

Really now you want to nerf a set? Or stats when you res? You do know that you dont res with full resources?

Also even smaller groups can use this to res their allies faster.

Exactly that, plsease stop , give ZOS more reason to nerf something, becasue ppls will cry that som1 is ressed to fast.. Its great fo casters, casue added spell dmg.. And thats all.. If u cant interupt som1 while ressing, thats ur problem.. Besides only templar with maxed alliance support passive will benefit much from this ressing speed.. Maybe focus templar then?

vortexman11

IxSTALKERxI wrote: »

Maybe Dk's can be useful in pvp afterall...

They can run around spamming deep breath (aoe interrupt)

I was going to say this >.<

Ezareth

mike.gaziotisb16_ESO wrote: »

We're getting 1 player in our small group to be a batplar with kag set. His char is new though so it's a bit of a grind to get the Battle Resurrection passive from Support line.

But when he's done you have 1.5" per resurrection and a 6" ultimate that makes you untargetable. In that time you can rez 2 players easy out of a 5 man group and there's nothing the opposition can do about it. On top of rezing them with full HP (another part of Templar passive Master Ritualist) and a 10k damage shield thanks to CS passive Revival (Lord tree).

We're tempted for max trolling to have every one else run the Phoenix set too, but that would be only for poops and giggles

Bat-ressing never works against decent players in my experience. 90% of the time Cinn tries it she is interrupted by shards, Fear, or even bashed by NPCs while trying to ress me. The best way to do it is just pop an immovable pot or immovable ability and laugh as your ress is guaranteed.

It really doesn't help that they added the passive that makes you take 25% less damage while ressing which added on top of other passive defenses and 2.1 and you may as well forget killing someone while they ress.

It just seems so incredibly poorly designed.

Zheg

vortexman11 wrote: »

IxSTALKERxI wrote: »

Maybe Dk's can be useful in pvp afterall...

They can run around spamming deep breath (aoe interrupt)

I was going to say this >.<

We've tried this. One of the problems is if you're outnumbered you need to stay with your group or die, and therefore you can only cover so much ground. The side with more numbers can just sprawl and then it's that much easier to rez. With a 1 sec rez, if the DK isn't already in melee range, you're not going to interrupt the rez.

Ezareth

Zheg wrote: »

vortexman11 wrote: »

IxSTALKERxI wrote: »

Maybe Dk's can be useful in pvp afterall...

They can run around spamming deep breath (aoe interrupt)

I was going to say this >.<

We've tried this. One of the problems is if you're outnumbered you need to stay with your group or die, and therefore you can only cover so much ground. The side with more numbers can just sprawl and then it's that much easier to rez. With a 1 sec rez, if the DK isn't already in melee range, you're not going to interrupt the rez.

100% of my magicka goes into fear spam when fighting groups of players. AoE Maim + Slow + CC works like a charm. I've never been in a position where I had two people ressing in range of each other where I could fear them both however.