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Upcoming siege changes in next major update

  • maxjapank
    maxjapank
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    Ghostbane wrote: »
    Brian,

    Not sure if this is taboo, or not following the Lore, but,



    Ground Oils?

    I keep hearing "ground oils", and though I understand the intention of using something against zergs, using a pot of oil on the ground was always silly. And I would never support reverting "oil pots" back to this. But I am not against the idea of something else in its place.
  • MisterBigglesworth
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    Bazeric wrote: »
    If Purge gets nerfed and healing reductions from seige gets stronger... won't that lead to more shield stacking?

    There's only one class that shield stacks effectively, and they already play that way so nothing would change there.

    The point was: Elder Sorcs Online. It's coming (as if it wasn't bad enough already)
    Really we do it without like, the musical instruments. This is the only musical: the mouth. And hopefully the brain attached to the mouth. Right? The brain, more important than the mouth, is the brain. The brain is much more important.
  • maxjapank
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    Turelus wrote: »
    More specifically:
    • Thank you Brian for continued communication and actually attempting to work this out with us and breaking the ZoS "secret laboratory" precedent.
    • Right now, siege very rarely makes a difference. Something had to be done.
    • Losing 5000 of a resource is rather significant.
    • The proposed oil catapult is too strong. 6 second unpurgable snare and 5000 stamina hit on a rapid fire siege weapon is a double whammy and a highly significant one at that. It should snare.
    • Lightning ballista are also rapid fire and thus the double whammy of snare + take away resources. Have it do respectable damage and resource drain (again traditional Elder Scrolls theme).
    • The stamina drain should go to Ice Catapult. These weapons are just bad and the double whammy is best placed with the, since because they are slow to fire and difficult to aim. Also ice traditionally drains stamina in Elder Scrolls and in the proposed system there is still little reason to use ice siege weaponry
    • Healing debuff should not stack with defile. From this thread, I got the impression they are separate debuffs.
    • You should have a long long long long talk with Eric Wrobel because our player abilities, which should be the focus of gameplay, are completely overshadowed by these proposed siege weapon changes. Check that, not just overshadowed but rendered completely useless because I can't even purge these things. He better do his job so I just dont insta-die when on a breech with all these unpruagble effects.

    These are some great points.

    What about:
    Lightning Ballista: 25% Snare + Magicka Damage + Low HP Damage.
    Ice Trebuchet: 25% Snare + Stamina Damage + Low HP Damage.
    Oil Pot Catapolt: 50% Snare + Moderate HP Damage.

    This way we give the Ice Trebuchet a purpose in life (and how did I forget Ice = Stam Damage!?!) the Lightning Ballista and Ice Treb have slightly weaker snares because they already have other effects which should be their main focus. The Oil Pot Catapolt becomes the snare weapon for people looking to snare.

    A bit punishing too punishing to Magicka players over Stamina don't you think? With the long slow rate of fire from Trebs?
    Edited by maxjapank on December 2, 2015 11:13PM
  • bowmanz607
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    Ishammael wrote: »
    frozywozy wrote: »
    The point IS to make it the most important thing to force zergballs to spread out, since magicka detonation didn't work and since purge / barrier spam counter everything. Those changes (if tweaked correctly and this is the reason why Brian Wheeler made this discussion in the first place) are going to finally give a chance to solo, small/medium groups to counter large organized groups during keep battles.

    If siege is the "most important" anti-zerg tool, then I'm out. Siege gameplay is even more boring that PvE.

    Game was sold as a large portion being siege warfare. Perhaps you bought the wrong game. That said, aoe cap removals solves everything. Siege is boosted and not required for zerg balls. best of both worlds.
  • Satiar
    Satiar
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    frozywozy wrote: »
    Satiar wrote: »
    frozywozy wrote: »
    Satiar wrote: »
    @frozywozy

    Agreed, you know I have advocated for un-purgable siege for nearly a year now, and you were one of the first ones on here to see why it was necessary. It is necessary, Siege is useless in its current form.

    What many people don't understand is Siege has to be the zerg buster, thats its role, artillery is designed for. Its ridiclious these people can stand in concentrated siege fire and oil pots and not die. I saw a group of 20 get hit by 3 fire ballistas, a fire treb, and a cold harbor fire ballista all at nearly the same time right into the middle of their group and not a single person died, it didn't even make a scratch, thats just outright rubbish plain and simple.

    These people are not looking at the bigger picture, Siege has the following DISADVANTAGES:

    1. it can only be placed on perfectly flat surfaces
    2. around keeps and such the limit is 20
    3. while using the siege weapon your 5 abilities and ultimate can not be used without getting off the siege.
    4. While using the siege weapin you are a sitting duck with no defense, vulnerable to any one sneaking up and killing you.
    5. Siege weapons are slow to turn, have a slow fire rate, and their projectiles travel slowly to far away targets
    6 Have a slow reload rate
    7. Must be packed and unpacked
    8. Each one takes up an inventory slot
    9. Cost AP to buy
    10. Cost AP to repair
    11. Wear out pretty quick
    12. Can be destroyed

    There is 12 BIG disadvantages to using a siege weapon, its needs to have some benefits for all the drawbacks to using them. Right now the drawbacks far outweigh any advantage there is to using them.

    These coming changes will alleviate those drawbacks somewhat, and yes just charging through a breech or chokepoint like you can right now just ignoring siege fire will get you killed...it was probably meant to be this way from the beginning.....right now the only way to defend a keep is to drop off the walls with a larger zerg and just zerg them over, defense of any objective in this game right now is utterly pointless with how useless eige is currently and how OP Purge and Barrier are....

    These changes to siege will be the best changes ZOS has ever made to ESO and will actually not only allow defense of objectives being viable, but small scale 4v4 and 6v6 at resources with siege fire from both sides and seeing who cna outflank who will be common place.

    Yes playing with strategy and being forced to flank your opponents siege line instead of everyone just zerg stomping everything i think is a win-win.

    I think these changes will be great, and i look forward to them...i look forward to the day that actually have a "high ground" defensive advantage will actually be a tactical advantage for a change instead of the current just zerg stomp everything...just my 2 cents :)

    I want siege to help. I want a good group to set up defensive siege and use that advantage to beat me. I don't want them to set up siege, and than simply win because my group can't move, can't heal, can't sustain doesn't want to spread out . Point and click to win is horrible gameplay for an action based mmo.

    Here, fixed that for you. :smile:
    Oh right, I'll spread out while moving through a choke, why didnt I think of that?

    @Satiar - I understand that this thread has now 20pages+ of comments in a two days period. But I have read and aknowledged all of it. I've replied to several players telling me the same argument. The main reason why all the small group folks want to buff siege is to give us a chance to hold the ballgroup as long as possible to give a chance to reinforcements to arrive. In most scenarios, people try to siege a keep with low defense and this is totally right to do so.

    As I pointed out in different posts, when you siege a keep that is well defended already, you should not expect to capture it with only a medium group. You should need an army to get it. When the breach goes down and defenders properly deployed counter-sieges aiming at the breach, YOU SHOULD BE FORCED to pick between two options :

    1) You spread out into smaller groups and jump inside between each siege volley
    2) You get an additional wall down

    There is no "How am I supposed to spread out when going inside a choke point". If people are covering a choke point with sieges, you simply don't go into that choke point. Simple enough right? Siege > Ball group. I understand that the skill involved in using a siege is not at the same level as running an organized group. BUT the point to have sieges is to COUNTER organized groups trying to capture a keep without the necessity to have our own organized group.

    This solution could be temporary until Zenimax finds a way to improve the latency. Because right now, when two different 24men groups fight each other inside a keep, it is unplayable. Whoever have the more numbers win because it takes too much time to cc break, weapon swap and all kind of crap. I personally would like these siege changes to stay in place even if we don't have latency problems anymore. Because I don't think the only counter to a ballgroup should be a ballgroup. We need another zerg buster and since Prox det totally failed this purpose, siege will do it entirely.
    frozywozy wrote: »
    Satiar wrote: »
    Xsorus wrote: »
    Satiar wrote: »
    maxjapank wrote: »
    Satiar wrote: »
    @frozywozy

    Agreed, you know I have advocated for un-purgable siege for nearly a year now, and you were one of the first ones on here to see why it was necessary. It is necessary, Siege is useless in its current form.

    What many people don't understand is Siege has to be the zerg buster, thats its role, artillery is designed for. Its ridiclious these people can stand in concentrated siege fire and oil pots and not die. I saw a group of 20 get hit by 3 fire ballistas, a fire treb, and a cold harbor fire ballista all at nearly the same time right into the middle of their group and not a single person died, it didn't even make a scratch, thats just outright rubbish plain and simple.

    These people are not looking at the bigger picture, Siege has the following DISADVANTAGES:

    1. it can only be placed on perfectly flat surfaces
    2. around keeps and such the limit is 20
    3. while using the siege weapon your 5 abilities and ultimate can not be used without getting off the siege.
    4. While using the siege weapin you are a sitting duck with no defense, vulnerable to any one sneaking up and killing you.
    5. Siege weapons are slow to turn, have a slow fire rate, and their projectiles travel slowly to far away targets
    6 Have a slow reload rate
    7. Must be packed and unpacked
    8. Each one takes up an inventory slot
    9. Cost AP to buy
    10. Cost AP to repair
    11. Wear out pretty quick
    12. Can be destroyed

    There is 12 BIG disadvantages to using a siege weapon, its needs to have some benefits for all the drawbacks to using them. Right now the drawbacks far outweigh any advantage there is to using them.

    These coming changes will alleviate those drawbacks somewhat, and yes just charging through a breech or chokepoint like you can right now just ignoring siege fire will get you killed...it was probably meant to be this way from the beginning.....right now the only way to defend a keep is to drop off the walls with a larger zerg and just zerg them over, defense of any objective in this game right now is utterly pointless with how useless eige is currently and how OP Purge and Barrier are....

    These changes to siege will be the best changes ZOS has ever made to ESO and will actually not only allow defense of objectives being viable, but small scale 4v4 and 6v6 at resources with siege fire from both sides and seeing who cna outflank who will be common place.

    Yes playing with strategy and being forced to flank your opponents siege line instead of everyone just zerg stomping everything i think is a win-win.

    I think these changes will be great, and i look forward to them...i look forward to the day that actually have a "high ground" defensive advantage will actually be a tactical advantage for a change instead of the current just zerg stomp everything...just my 2 cents :)

    I want siege to help. I want a good group to set up defensive siege and use that advantage to beat me. I don't want them to set up siege, and than simply win because my group can't move, can't heal, can't sustain. Point and click to win is horrible gameplay for an action based mmo.

    But you can move, heal, sustain if you avoid siege. Right now, you don't need to do anything but stack and purge. Now I'm not completely on board with 6 seconds of unpurgable debuffs. Perhaps numbers can be adjusted. But overall, I see some good things with these changes.

    When pushing a choke in a keep, the whole point is it is a choke. if I can't move for shares, can't block or dodge for Stam reduction, can't heal for magica reduction and heal rebuffs, cannot purge these debuffs, what am I supposed to do? It's suicide and everyone knows it.

    There's only a few spots siege can fire at from in a keep..A lot of it can't hit the same spot or spots near the choke point..You'll have to time when ya go in...and maybe not rush all in at once (As in half go in to draw fire then the other half rush in right afterwards when they're moving their weapon to hit the people who just ran in)

    Going through a choke point thats well defended will be dangerous....compared to now where you just ignore it.

    It is still extremely dangerous as is. Pushing into keeps you can put one siege on flag, one on opposite postern, one breach mid stairs, one top breach stairs, and two and the U that can all be set to bombard the breach. As is if defenders know what they are doing a group is usually annihilated on the breach or shortly after.

    But most defenders would rather whine about ball groups and clamor for increased siege damage than watch what groups like Haxus do with un-buffed siege and a few ultis beneath oils.

    Are you seriously claiming that sieges inside keeps are dangerous as it is right now? You must be kidding me. You are one of the few groups who don't even bother going straight on flags when you get inside an inner. Often I see your group running up the stairs to the back flag to the inner breach, and up the stairs again doing your lil maneuvers for 5minutes straight, killing people NOT because it is necessary and because you risk wiping BUT for the show and for the extra APs, even if you will never admit it.

    Siege does absolutely nothing and bring no threat whatsoever to your 4-5 barriers rotation, purge and regen maneuver spammers 24men group. Don't even try.. ;)

    Wait what?

    How I take a keep depends entirely on who is inside it. There are several ways to play a keep take. You can push through to flags and force an enemy to engage you there, you can go up far or near side stairs and attempt to control the top, you can paintrain around to beat down resistance before taking flags. I'll never deny trying to get my guys some AP and kills, but serious keep takes with serious resistance are entirely different.

    Siege on its own isn't going to kill me, obviously. I have 24 people specced to heal, purge and maintain the raid. if any random person could put siege on me and ruin me, that'd be silly. What ruins me in keep takes is a well-coordinated group using their defensive choke to force me into a bad situation. Honestly, the main guild that does this now is Haxus. Most other groups try to bomb me on back flag, or on front flag, or at the top of the stairs-- meh. I'd say 90% of my keep wipes come from getting ult-dumped in the breach. All it takes is one good burst of DPS and CC there, and suddenly everything catches up: the oils, the meatbags, the fire trebs/ballista. And than we die, and it's tragic.

    @Satiar - Like I've said in my post, it is easy to see the difference between a large group going upstair to clear the oils, going on the flags to flip the keep, etc. Alot of times, when I see you guys taking Chalman, this is NOT what you do. You spend 5 minutes running arround the inner keep to farm people for the show, not because they apply any threat whatsoever to you. Siege is a joke as it is. I fire your guys with meatbags, fire balistas and what are the results? As soon as my siege reach your guys, there is another barrier popping up.
    Can most people do it to us? Yes, but they don't. You have no idea how many times I've been defending a keep or outpost on DC and seen everyone huddled upstairs and pounding the breach with siege as if that's supposed to do something. Siege is a tool, a force amplifier, something you use to make your group's defensive position stronger. Buffing it to godly levels because you can't be bothered to learn how to use your other tools (your group) in addition to using point and click siege is just silly.

    This thread is not a patch note. This thread is an open discussion opened by Brian Wheeler months in advance to hear our feedbacks and suggestions. Like most people, including me pointed out, the siege buffs are overkilled. I have given several suggestions to tweak it down but in the end, the UTILITY of the sieges HAVE to change. It is not only a matter of damage.

    My suggestions, again, in case you missed it :

    1) Meatbag and oil catapult debuffs/snares SHOULD be purgable, but not with any morph of Purge. Purge should be used only to remove player debuffs/snares. Cleansing Ritual should remove every negative effect. It would require individual player interaction using the synergy himself.

    2) Oil catapult / Lightning balista should deal only 2k damage (for testing purposes - adjust if needed afterward)

    3) Retreating Maneuvers should NOT remove or give immunity to siege snares (only player snares). Charging Maneuvers should remove siege snares but NOT give immunity.
    Satiar wrote: »
    Xsorus wrote: »
    Satiar wrote: »
    Xsorus wrote: »
    Satiar wrote: »
    maxjapank wrote: »
    Satiar wrote: »
    @frozywozy

    Agreed, you know I have advocated for un-purgable siege for nearly a year now, and you were one of the first ones on here to see why it was necessary. It is necessary, Siege is useless in its current form.

    What many people don't understand is Siege has to be the zerg buster, thats its role, artillery is designed for. Its ridiclious these people can stand in concentrated siege fire and oil pots and not die. I saw a group of 20 get hit by 3 fire ballistas, a fire treb, and a cold harbor fire ballista all at nearly the same time right into the middle of their group and not a single person died, it didn't even make a scratch, thats just outright rubbish plain and simple.

    These people are not looking at the bigger picture, Siege has the following DISADVANTAGES:

    1. it can only be placed on perfectly flat surfaces
    2. around keeps and such the limit is 20
    3. while using the siege weapon your 5 abilities and ultimate can not be used without getting off the siege.
    4. While using the siege weapin you are a sitting duck with no defense, vulnerable to any one sneaking up and killing you.
    5. Siege weapons are slow to turn, have a slow fire rate, and their projectiles travel slowly to far away targets
    6 Have a slow reload rate
    7. Must be packed and unpacked
    8. Each one takes up an inventory slot
    9. Cost AP to buy
    10. Cost AP to repair
    11. Wear out pretty quick
    12. Can be destroyed

    There is 12 BIG disadvantages to using a siege weapon, its needs to have some benefits for all the drawbacks to using them. Right now the drawbacks far outweigh any advantage there is to using them.

    These coming changes will alleviate those drawbacks somewhat, and yes just charging through a breech or chokepoint like you can right now just ignoring siege fire will get you killed...it was probably meant to be this way from the beginning.....right now the only way to defend a keep is to drop off the walls with a larger zerg and just zerg them over, defense of any objective in this game right now is utterly pointless with how useless eige is currently and how OP Purge and Barrier are....

    These changes to siege will be the best changes ZOS has ever made to ESO and will actually not only allow defense of objectives being viable, but small scale 4v4 and 6v6 at resources with siege fire from both sides and seeing who cna outflank who will be common place.

    Yes playing with strategy and being forced to flank your opponents siege line instead of everyone just zerg stomping everything i think is a win-win.

    I think these changes will be great, and i look forward to them...i look forward to the day that actually have a "high ground" defensive advantage will actually be a tactical advantage for a change instead of the current just zerg stomp everything...just my 2 cents :)

    I want siege to help. I want a good group to set up defensive siege and use that advantage to beat me. I don't want them to set up siege, and than simply win because my group can't move, can't heal, can't sustain. Point and click to win is horrible gameplay for an action based mmo.

    But you can move, heal, sustain if you avoid siege. Right now, you don't need to do anything but stack and purge. Now I'm not completely on board with 6 seconds of unpurgable debuffs. Perhaps numbers can be adjusted. But overall, I see some good things with these changes.

    When pushing a choke in a keep, the whole point is it is a choke. if I can't move for shares, can't block or dodge for Stam reduction, can't heal for magica reduction and heal rebuffs, cannot purge these debuffs, what am I supposed to do? It's suicide and everyone knows it.

    There's only a few spots siege can fire at from in a keep..A lot of it can't hit the same spot or spots near the choke point..You'll have to time when ya go in...and maybe not rush all in at once (As in half go in to draw fire then the other half rush in right afterwards when they're moving their weapon to hit the people who just ran in)

    Going through a choke point thats well defended will be dangerous....compared to now where you just ignore it.

    It is still extremely dangerous as is. Pushing into keeps you can put one siege on flag, one on opposite postern, one breach mid stairs, one top breach stairs, and two and the U that can all be set to bombard the breach. As is if defenders know what they are doing a group is usually annihilated on the breach or shortly after.

    But most defenders would rather whine about ball groups and clamor for increased siege damage than watch what groups like Haxus do with un-buffed siege and a few ultis beneath oils.

    Are you seriously trying to claim a breech is extremely dangerous right now for a Ball Group?

    /facepalm

    Against anyone who knows what they are doing, yes. Turns out when you work together as a team and employ basic tactics a heavily defensible position can be ... wait for it... easily defended.

    You have a choke you can clog with siege and dump ultis on that your enemy MUST pass through. It's a defenders wet dream. That you don't recognize this is why I mostly don't trust your opinion in group play, as you clearly dont get even basic things like this.

    Having personally defended keeps with my "Zerg" of 8-12 people precisely because of siege and convenient chokes, I just don't get what the hell you've going on about

    The fact that your medium group successfuly defended a keep against larger numbers doesn't prouve anything. You simply faced disorganized pugs / groups / guilds. You didn't faced Vehemence. :smile:


    I mean, sure. I think you sometimes forget Vehemence wasn't always this way. We didn't clamor for siege buffs and nerfs to group skills, etc., to beat the guilds and groups that were beating us: we learned from the groups that were winning, and learned to win ourselves. Bombing the breach with siege as backup has been extremely effective for us as a group, and it's something I remember learning from Crystalize. He used to go down on the mid-stairs, meatbag across the way and at the top, oils on the lip, and just pour DPS on people coming in the breach. It doesn't take a lot to break the purge/barrier spam of a group if you do it right, I've seen good raids melted when a well-timed leap or meteor broke up their cycle and they never recovered from the debuffs/oil/fire and subsequent damage.

    I'm all kinds of fine with siege getting a buff. Eh, whatever. I can manage that. Sure, why not. But the buff amounts we're talking here are insane. The response to "spread out" is also kinda hilarious. Sure, I'll spread out my 20 people when running into a group of 40-50, that's gonna work out just fine. Surely, we won't be separated and dragged down by superior numbers except OF COURSE we will because that's the whole idea of an elite raid in this game: a collection of players that play together in such a way that their effectiveness is greater than the sum of all parts. Once you remove a group's ability to play as a team than you're not going to win outnumbered anymore.

    It's funny that you talk about spreading out your numbers (24+ group) against a group larger than yours. Seriously, how many times a night do you face larger numbers against your group? If you face larger numbers, you SHOULD have a major disadvantage. Especially when fighting openfield. It is the same for small/medium group fighting your large group, we have a disadvantage facing you openfield. During keep battles, sieges should have a major impact into the war as it was intended before this game got released.

    You fight in an area and people start deploying too many sieges against you? Spread out, move to a different location, use LoS or die. Simple enough.

    GoS does it really well. Even with a 24men group, they rarely ball up. They fight with a certain distance between each other and they win against skilled groups. This behaviour will help them a ton when new siege changes get in place.

    I'm at work so this will be fairly concise.

    GoS balls up plenty. Believe me, I fight them enough, ask Rylana. Against groups like mine they have strats that involve spreading out, but they certainly recondense when they want to hit us hard, or against groups that don't have as much DPS as mine. Remember, spreading out is a survival tactic, not a winning one. Winning in a group of any size is the same: focused dps. In a small man it's sustaining till you burst down the enemy healer, in raids it's sustaining/scattering until you recondense to aoe bomb.

    As to how many times I'm outnumbered, I'd say plenty. On Monday and Sunday of this week alone with 24 people I found myself fighting against 2-5x my number. I might have won at Aleswell too if not for lag, at the end there was simply no abilities going off, but until then we repelled groups upwards of 3x our size from the keeps and surrounding resources. On a regular night I find myself outnumbered pretty much anytime I hit a defended keep. If the people within the keep grouped up and used strategy I'd have a really tough time of it.

    In the end that's why I'm really bothered by these changes. Bulb and I wanted to effect change on the Map, we wanted to wipe big groups, defend keeps, take territory. So we learned macro strategy, built our small group of players into a competitive raid and adapted to multiple patches and metas. And we are effective at all sizes. I logged on the other day to hear zone complaining about an AD ball group terrorizing glademist, all the usual about invincible spam monkeys. Went over and killed them with 8 people and a meatbag. What stopped the 30 other people there from doing exactly that? A lack of organization, know how or skill.

    That's why this looks ugly to me. Gameplay mechanics aren't holding people back, there is no secret formula for success. But you and others in this thread talk about changes that will allow you to take on and defeat a group like mine and quite frankly you don't deserve to. If you want to beat a good guild, earn it. Build your group, learn strategy, time some stealth bombs. To everyone complaining you can't stop these "ball groups", good. You didn't build to beat them, they built themselves to beat you, and they're going to keep doing it until you stop complaining and decide to counter them.

    Or the other option, which is to complain until ZoS changes the game so some randoms in a keep are competitive with a fully optimized and organized raid. And than what's the point at all?

    As to me running around a keep for no reason, I'm game to see footage. I can't remember ever doing this unless I'm expecting incoming and am trying to keep my raid mobile.

    In the end, siege should have w counter. Everything in the game has a counter. Snares, healing, debuffs. roots, damage, shields, siege damage, etc. It makes for a decent meta. High damage groups forgo shields to burn opponents, sustain groups adapt by swapping to ground based damage reduction and heavy CC, which can than be countered by negates and stationary siege, etc. Whatever siege mechanics are added simply must have counters, otherwise they become stupidly overpowered and give anyone with the numbers to run them a rediculous advantage.

    Hell, you think keep takes are hard now, wait until an organized raid is defending a keep inner with a full siege deployment. It's going to be stupid, and the only way to take it from them will be ....

    .....

    wait for it....

    ... to stack bigger numbers yourself. Back to square *** one.
    Edited by Satiar on December 2, 2015 11:29PM
    Vehemence -- Commander and Raid Lead -- Tri-faction PvP
    Knights Paravant -- Co-GM and Raid Lead -- AD Greyhost



  • MisterBigglesworth
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    So yeah just an FYI to everyone who wants to continue running a zergball after this, dust off your Altmer Sorc and stack those shields!
    Really we do it without like, the musical instruments. This is the only musical: the mouth. And hopefully the brain attached to the mouth. Right? The brain, more important than the mouth, is the brain. The brain is much more important.
  • _adhyffbjjjf12
    _adhyffbjjjf12
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    'macro strategy', 'defeat a group like mine' get over yourself, your playing a game with real people. people like you are a virus that cannot comprehend that fun in a game is about having battlefields that are continually balance and rewards individual or strategic game play. running about in a ball playing follow my leader while rolling your face on the aoe button is not good gameplay, its destructive. You think running in a tight group aoring is fun?
  • timidobserver
    timidobserver
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    So yeah just an FYI to everyone who wants to continue running a zergball after this, dust off your Altmer Sorc and stack those shields!

    Or just quadruple the size of your zergball.
    V16 Uriel Stormblessed EP Magicka Templar(main)
    V16 Derelict Vagabond EP Stamina DK
    V16 Redacted Ep Stam Sorc
    V16 Insolent EP Magicka Sorc(retired)
    V16 Jed I Nyte EP Stamina NB(retired)

  • MisterBigglesworth
    MisterBigglesworth
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    So yeah just an FYI to everyone who wants to continue running a zergball after this, dust off your Altmer Sorc and stack those shields!

    Or just quadruple the size of your zergball.

    Yes... but also have them all be Sorcs with huuuuge effing shields so as to circumvent the healing debuff from seige.
    Really we do it without like, the musical instruments. This is the only musical: the mouth. And hopefully the brain attached to the mouth. Right? The brain, more important than the mouth, is the brain. The brain is much more important.
  • Satiar
    Satiar
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    ✭✭✭
    'macro strategy', 'defeat a group like mine' get over yourself, your playing a game with real people. people like you are a virus that cannot comprehend that fun in a game is about having battlefields that are continually balance and rewards individual or strategic game play. running about in a ball playing follow my leader while rolling your face on the aoe button is not good gameplay, its destructive. You think running in a tight group aoring is fun?

    Ok mate.

    I've done just about everything in this game, from dueling to duo to 4v4 to small man, raiding and raid leading. Had fun with all of them. Most of the fun came from overcoming challenges, and optimizing myself and my group to beat things we couldn't beat.

    I don't like I Win buttons. People who advocate for them instead of learning to overcome within existing gameplay shouldn't expect to relieve anything but scorn.

    And yeah they're fun! There's a great thrill when you win versus another good group, a huge satisfaction that comes from building your group and strategies to win against groups that used to beat you. It's basically dueling on a macro level.
    Edited by Satiar on December 2, 2015 11:42PM
    Vehemence -- Commander and Raid Lead -- Tri-faction PvP
    Knights Paravant -- Co-GM and Raid Lead -- AD Greyhost



  • Kwivur
    Kwivur
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    Just make purge a cast on self skill.
  • Satiar
    Satiar
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    ✭✭✭
    Kwivur wrote: »
    Just make purge a cast on self skill.

    That would be fine. Be rough if there was no Stam equivalent but I could deal. Would make group strats more complex, could actually use some aoe debuffs and not assume they'd be incidentally purged.
    Vehemence -- Commander and Raid Lead -- Tri-faction PvP
    Knights Paravant -- Co-GM and Raid Lead -- AD Greyhost



  • Kwivur
    Kwivur
    ✭✭✭✭
    Satiar wrote: »
    Kwivur wrote: »
    Just make purge a cast on self skill.

    That would be fine. Be rough if there was no Stam equivalent but I could deal. Would make group strats more complex, could actually use some aoe debuffs and not assume they'd be incidentally purged.

    Exactly
  • Talcyndl
    Talcyndl
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    bowmanz607 wrote: »
    That said, aoe cap removals solves everything. Siege is boosted and not required for zerg balls. best of both worlds.


    Removing AoE caps alone doesn't fix the Blobs. The Blobs will still have what I call Effective Damage Immunity. That results from three things unrelated to the AoE cap:

    (1) Purge.
    (2) "Smart" heals that automatically target low health allies along with spammable AoE Heals.
    (3) Spammable high damage AoE that prevents any melee attacker from surviving inside the Blob for more than a second.

    Now maybe it would give some 6 man groups a chance against larger numbers, but it wouldn't fix the underlying Effective Damage Immunity problem.
    Tal'gro Bol
    PvP Vice Officer [Retired] and Huscarl of Vokundein
    http://www.legend-gaming.net/vokundein/
  • Talcyndl
    Talcyndl
    ✭✭✭✭✭
    Satiar wrote: »
    learning to overcome within existing gameplay shouldn't expect to relieve anything but scorn.

    Under the current system how does one overcome a Blob group - other than with another (usually larger) Blob or a HUGE Zerg, thereby lagging out the server?
    Tal'gro Bol
    PvP Vice Officer [Retired] and Huscarl of Vokundein
    http://www.legend-gaming.net/vokundein/
  • bowmanz607
    bowmanz607
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    Talcyndl wrote: »
    bowmanz607 wrote: »
    That said, aoe cap removals solves everything. Siege is boosted and not required for zerg balls. best of both worlds.


    Removing AoE caps alone doesn't fix the Blobs. The Blobs will still have what I call Effective Damage Immunity. That results from three things unrelated to the AoE cap:

    (1) Purge.
    (2) "Smart" heals that automatically target low health allies along with spammable AoE Heals.
    (3) Spammable high damage AoE that prevents any melee attacker from surviving inside the Blob for more than a second.

    Now maybe it would give some 6 man groups a chance against larger numbers, but it wouldn't fix the underlying Effective Damage Immunity problem.

    You assume blobs will still be around with these changes. This wasnt an issue until aoe caps. before that groups were more spread out. And this issue you speak of with melee users, are you refering to if one person did it? Then yes that one melee should die to 20. Other than that melee aoe (steel tornado) is the most effective aoe.
  • Satiar
    Satiar
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    ✭✭✭
    Talcyndl wrote: »
    Satiar wrote: »
    learning to overcome within existing gameplay shouldn't expect to relieve anything but scorn.

    Under the current system how does one overcome a Blob group - other than with another (usually larger) Blob or a HUGE Zerg, thereby lagging out the server?
    DPS bombs are highly effective. Open field it's unlikely you'll beat a highly optimized group without organization, and that's arguably how it should be. Inside a keep, you have siege and choke points. Even just 12 people popping a DPS ulti and moving into a group already getting hit by siege is going to hurt really, really bad. As I said earlier, most of my keep wipes happen that way, with a smaller group hitting me with guns blazing while I'm caught in oil, meatbag and Fire.

    But yeah. For a group is big and highly optimized they should be hard to kill without putting srlerious effort in or fighting them in an extremely advantageous position.
    Vehemence -- Commander and Raid Lead -- Tri-faction PvP
    Knights Paravant -- Co-GM and Raid Lead -- AD Greyhost



  • Talcyndl
    Talcyndl
    ✭✭✭✭✭
    Satiar wrote: »
    If the people within the keep grouped up and used strategy I'd have a really tough time of it.

    That's the problem with the game at the moment. The only counter is "grouping" - meaning balling up into a Blob - and "AoE bombing". It is effective.

    IMO, too effective.

    It also brings the server to its knees.

    They have admitted there is no magic fix to the server being unable to handle the density of players spamming AoEs.

    So, we have two basic choices:

    (1) Keep a system which demands players ball up and AoE bomb. This means the lag continues.

    or

    (2) Change something to counter/nerf AoE bombing.

    The only real way @ZOS_BrianWheeler can implement that change is via siege.
    Tal'gro Bol
    PvP Vice Officer [Retired] and Huscarl of Vokundein
    http://www.legend-gaming.net/vokundein/
  • maxjapank
    maxjapank
    ✭✭✭✭✭
    ✭✭
    Talcyndl wrote: »
    bowmanz607 wrote: »
    That said, aoe cap removals solves everything. Siege is boosted and not required for zerg balls. best of both worlds.


    Removing AoE caps alone doesn't fix the Blobs. The Blobs will still have what I call Effective Damage Immunity. That results from three things unrelated to the AoE cap:

    (1) Purge.
    (2) "Smart" heals that automatically target low health allies along with spammable AoE Heals.
    (3) Spammable high damage AoE that prevents any melee attacker from surviving inside the Blob for more than a second.

    Now maybe it would give some 6 man groups a chance against larger numbers, but it wouldn't fix the underlying Effective Damage Immunity problem.

    "Smart Heals" are one the greatest things about ESO. Healers still have to keep an eye on party members health, but they also get to enjoy seeing the fight and even fight themselves if they so choose. The aoe heals are also engaging because you must position yourself or lay down the aoe heal in the right location.

    I don't know of any healer who would want to return to the "whack a mole" style of healing that existed in games like World of Warcraft. Where you just stared at party frames the entire fight. In fact, I remember post after post of healers saying how much they enjoyed the healing style of ESO. If there was one complaint, then that complaint was healing people outside of the group. Some people wanted heals to be specific to their own group. But I don't think I'd support that.

    I know that "popular" streamers are harping about "smart heals". But they have never played a healer from what I know. They don't know how much fun healing is in ESO.

    Edited by maxjapank on December 3, 2015 12:37AM
  • frozywozy
    frozywozy
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    ✭✭
    Satiar wrote: »
    frozywozy wrote: »
    Satiar wrote: »
    frozywozy wrote: »
    Satiar wrote: »
    @frozywozy

    Agreed, you know I have advocated for un-purgable siege for nearly a year now, and you were one of the first ones on here to see why it was necessary. It is necessary, Siege is useless in its current form.

    What many people don't understand is Siege has to be the zerg buster, thats its role, artillery is designed for. Its ridiclious these people can stand in concentrated siege fire and oil pots and not die. I saw a group of 20 get hit by 3 fire ballistas, a fire treb, and a cold harbor fire ballista all at nearly the same time right into the middle of their group and not a single person died, it didn't even make a scratch, thats just outright rubbish plain and simple.

    These people are not looking at the bigger picture, Siege has the following DISADVANTAGES:

    1. it can only be placed on perfectly flat surfaces
    2. around keeps and such the limit is 20
    3. while using the siege weapon your 5 abilities and ultimate can not be used without getting off the siege.
    4. While using the siege weapin you are a sitting duck with no defense, vulnerable to any one sneaking up and killing you.
    5. Siege weapons are slow to turn, have a slow fire rate, and their projectiles travel slowly to far away targets
    6 Have a slow reload rate
    7. Must be packed and unpacked
    8. Each one takes up an inventory slot
    9. Cost AP to buy
    10. Cost AP to repair
    11. Wear out pretty quick
    12. Can be destroyed

    There is 12 BIG disadvantages to using a siege weapon, its needs to have some benefits for all the drawbacks to using them. Right now the drawbacks far outweigh any advantage there is to using them.

    These coming changes will alleviate those drawbacks somewhat, and yes just charging through a breech or chokepoint like you can right now just ignoring siege fire will get you killed...it was probably meant to be this way from the beginning.....right now the only way to defend a keep is to drop off the walls with a larger zerg and just zerg them over, defense of any objective in this game right now is utterly pointless with how useless eige is currently and how OP Purge and Barrier are....

    These changes to siege will be the best changes ZOS has ever made to ESO and will actually not only allow defense of objectives being viable, but small scale 4v4 and 6v6 at resources with siege fire from both sides and seeing who cna outflank who will be common place.

    Yes playing with strategy and being forced to flank your opponents siege line instead of everyone just zerg stomping everything i think is a win-win.

    I think these changes will be great, and i look forward to them...i look forward to the day that actually have a "high ground" defensive advantage will actually be a tactical advantage for a change instead of the current just zerg stomp everything...just my 2 cents :)

    I want siege to help. I want a good group to set up defensive siege and use that advantage to beat me. I don't want them to set up siege, and than simply win because my group can't move, can't heal, can't sustain doesn't want to spread out . Point and click to win is horrible gameplay for an action based mmo.

    Here, fixed that for you. :smile:
    Oh right, I'll spread out while moving through a choke, why didnt I think of that?

    @Satiar - I understand that this thread has now 20pages+ of comments in a two days period. But I have read and aknowledged all of it. I've replied to several players telling me the same argument. The main reason why all the small group folks want to buff siege is to give us a chance to hold the ballgroup as long as possible to give a chance to reinforcements to arrive. In most scenarios, people try to siege a keep with low defense and this is totally right to do so.

    As I pointed out in different posts, when you siege a keep that is well defended already, you should not expect to capture it with only a medium group. You should need an army to get it. When the breach goes down and defenders properly deployed counter-sieges aiming at the breach, YOU SHOULD BE FORCED to pick between two options :

    1) You spread out into smaller groups and jump inside between each siege volley
    2) You get an additional wall down

    There is no "How am I supposed to spread out when going inside a choke point". If people are covering a choke point with sieges, you simply don't go into that choke point. Simple enough right? Siege > Ball group. I understand that the skill involved in using a siege is not at the same level as running an organized group. BUT the point to have sieges is to COUNTER organized groups trying to capture a keep without the necessity to have our own organized group.

    This solution could be temporary until Zenimax finds a way to improve the latency. Because right now, when two different 24men groups fight each other inside a keep, it is unplayable. Whoever have the more numbers win because it takes too much time to cc break, weapon swap and all kind of crap. I personally would like these siege changes to stay in place even if we don't have latency problems anymore. Because I don't think the only counter to a ballgroup should be a ballgroup. We need another zerg buster and since Prox det totally failed this purpose, siege will do it entirely.
    frozywozy wrote: »
    Satiar wrote: »
    Xsorus wrote: »
    Satiar wrote: »
    maxjapank wrote: »
    Satiar wrote: »
    @frozywozy

    Agreed, you know I have advocated for un-purgable siege for nearly a year now, and you were one of the first ones on here to see why it was necessary. It is necessary, Siege is useless in its current form.

    What many people don't understand is Siege has to be the zerg buster, thats its role, artillery is designed for. Its ridiclious these people can stand in concentrated siege fire and oil pots and not die. I saw a group of 20 get hit by 3 fire ballistas, a fire treb, and a cold harbor fire ballista all at nearly the same time right into the middle of their group and not a single person died, it didn't even make a scratch, thats just outright rubbish plain and simple.

    These people are not looking at the bigger picture, Siege has the following DISADVANTAGES:

    1. it can only be placed on perfectly flat surfaces
    2. around keeps and such the limit is 20
    3. while using the siege weapon your 5 abilities and ultimate can not be used without getting off the siege.
    4. While using the siege weapin you are a sitting duck with no defense, vulnerable to any one sneaking up and killing you.
    5. Siege weapons are slow to turn, have a slow fire rate, and their projectiles travel slowly to far away targets
    6 Have a slow reload rate
    7. Must be packed and unpacked
    8. Each one takes up an inventory slot
    9. Cost AP to buy
    10. Cost AP to repair
    11. Wear out pretty quick
    12. Can be destroyed

    There is 12 BIG disadvantages to using a siege weapon, its needs to have some benefits for all the drawbacks to using them. Right now the drawbacks far outweigh any advantage there is to using them.

    These coming changes will alleviate those drawbacks somewhat, and yes just charging through a breech or chokepoint like you can right now just ignoring siege fire will get you killed...it was probably meant to be this way from the beginning.....right now the only way to defend a keep is to drop off the walls with a larger zerg and just zerg them over, defense of any objective in this game right now is utterly pointless with how useless eige is currently and how OP Purge and Barrier are....

    These changes to siege will be the best changes ZOS has ever made to ESO and will actually not only allow defense of objectives being viable, but small scale 4v4 and 6v6 at resources with siege fire from both sides and seeing who cna outflank who will be common place.

    Yes playing with strategy and being forced to flank your opponents siege line instead of everyone just zerg stomping everything i think is a win-win.

    I think these changes will be great, and i look forward to them...i look forward to the day that actually have a "high ground" defensive advantage will actually be a tactical advantage for a change instead of the current just zerg stomp everything...just my 2 cents :)

    I want siege to help. I want a good group to set up defensive siege and use that advantage to beat me. I don't want them to set up siege, and than simply win because my group can't move, can't heal, can't sustain. Point and click to win is horrible gameplay for an action based mmo.

    But you can move, heal, sustain if you avoid siege. Right now, you don't need to do anything but stack and purge. Now I'm not completely on board with 6 seconds of unpurgable debuffs. Perhaps numbers can be adjusted. But overall, I see some good things with these changes.

    When pushing a choke in a keep, the whole point is it is a choke. if I can't move for shares, can't block or dodge for Stam reduction, can't heal for magica reduction and heal rebuffs, cannot purge these debuffs, what am I supposed to do? It's suicide and everyone knows it.

    There's only a few spots siege can fire at from in a keep..A lot of it can't hit the same spot or spots near the choke point..You'll have to time when ya go in...and maybe not rush all in at once (As in half go in to draw fire then the other half rush in right afterwards when they're moving their weapon to hit the people who just ran in)

    Going through a choke point thats well defended will be dangerous....compared to now where you just ignore it.

    It is still extremely dangerous as is. Pushing into keeps you can put one siege on flag, one on opposite postern, one breach mid stairs, one top breach stairs, and two and the U that can all be set to bombard the breach. As is if defenders know what they are doing a group is usually annihilated on the breach or shortly after.

    But most defenders would rather whine about ball groups and clamor for increased siege damage than watch what groups like Haxus do with un-buffed siege and a few ultis beneath oils.

    Are you seriously claiming that sieges inside keeps are dangerous as it is right now? You must be kidding me. You are one of the few groups who don't even bother going straight on flags when you get inside an inner. Often I see your group running up the stairs to the back flag to the inner breach, and up the stairs again doing your lil maneuvers for 5minutes straight, killing people NOT because it is necessary and because you risk wiping BUT for the show and for the extra APs, even if you will never admit it.

    Siege does absolutely nothing and bring no threat whatsoever to your 4-5 barriers rotation, purge and regen maneuver spammers 24men group. Don't even try.. ;)

    Wait what?

    How I take a keep depends entirely on who is inside it. There are several ways to play a keep take. You can push through to flags and force an enemy to engage you there, you can go up far or near side stairs and attempt to control the top, you can paintrain around to beat down resistance before taking flags. I'll never deny trying to get my guys some AP and kills, but serious keep takes with serious resistance are entirely different.

    Siege on its own isn't going to kill me, obviously. I have 24 people specced to heal, purge and maintain the raid. if any random person could put siege on me and ruin me, that'd be silly. What ruins me in keep takes is a well-coordinated group using their defensive choke to force me into a bad situation. Honestly, the main guild that does this now is Haxus. Most other groups try to bomb me on back flag, or on front flag, or at the top of the stairs-- meh. I'd say 90% of my keep wipes come from getting ult-dumped in the breach. All it takes is one good burst of DPS and CC there, and suddenly everything catches up: the oils, the meatbags, the fire trebs/ballista. And than we die, and it's tragic.

    @Satiar - Like I've said in my post, it is easy to see the difference between a large group going upstair to clear the oils, going on the flags to flip the keep, etc. Alot of times, when I see you guys taking Chalman, this is NOT what you do. You spend 5 minutes running arround the inner keep to farm people for the show, not because they apply any threat whatsoever to you. Siege is a joke as it is. I fire your guys with meatbags, fire balistas and what are the results? As soon as my siege reach your guys, there is another barrier popping up.
    Can most people do it to us? Yes, but they don't. You have no idea how many times I've been defending a keep or outpost on DC and seen everyone huddled upstairs and pounding the breach with siege as if that's supposed to do something. Siege is a tool, a force amplifier, something you use to make your group's defensive position stronger. Buffing it to godly levels because you can't be bothered to learn how to use your other tools (your group) in addition to using point and click siege is just silly.

    This thread is not a patch note. This thread is an open discussion opened by Brian Wheeler months in advance to hear our feedbacks and suggestions. Like most people, including me pointed out, the siege buffs are overkilled. I have given several suggestions to tweak it down but in the end, the UTILITY of the sieges HAVE to change. It is not only a matter of damage.

    My suggestions, again, in case you missed it :

    1) Meatbag and oil catapult debuffs/snares SHOULD be purgable, but not with any morph of Purge. Purge should be used only to remove player debuffs/snares. Cleansing Ritual should remove every negative effect. It would require individual player interaction using the synergy himself.

    2) Oil catapult / Lightning balista should deal only 2k damage (for testing purposes - adjust if needed afterward)

    3) Retreating Maneuvers should NOT remove or give immunity to siege snares (only player snares). Charging Maneuvers should remove siege snares but NOT give immunity.
    Satiar wrote: »
    Xsorus wrote: »
    Satiar wrote: »
    Xsorus wrote: »
    Satiar wrote: »
    maxjapank wrote: »
    Satiar wrote: »
    @frozywozy

    Agreed, you know I have advocated for un-purgable siege for nearly a year now, and you were one of the first ones on here to see why it was necessary. It is necessary, Siege is useless in its current form.

    What many people don't understand is Siege has to be the zerg buster, thats its role, artillery is designed for. Its ridiclious these people can stand in concentrated siege fire and oil pots and not die. I saw a group of 20 get hit by 3 fire ballistas, a fire treb, and a cold harbor fire ballista all at nearly the same time right into the middle of their group and not a single person died, it didn't even make a scratch, thats just outright rubbish plain and simple.

    These people are not looking at the bigger picture, Siege has the following DISADVANTAGES:

    1. it can only be placed on perfectly flat surfaces
    2. around keeps and such the limit is 20
    3. while using the siege weapon your 5 abilities and ultimate can not be used without getting off the siege.
    4. While using the siege weapin you are a sitting duck with no defense, vulnerable to any one sneaking up and killing you.
    5. Siege weapons are slow to turn, have a slow fire rate, and their projectiles travel slowly to far away targets
    6 Have a slow reload rate
    7. Must be packed and unpacked
    8. Each one takes up an inventory slot
    9. Cost AP to buy
    10. Cost AP to repair
    11. Wear out pretty quick
    12. Can be destroyed

    There is 12 BIG disadvantages to using a siege weapon, its needs to have some benefits for all the drawbacks to using them. Right now the drawbacks far outweigh any advantage there is to using them.

    These coming changes will alleviate those drawbacks somewhat, and yes just charging through a breech or chokepoint like you can right now just ignoring siege fire will get you killed...it was probably meant to be this way from the beginning.....right now the only way to defend a keep is to drop off the walls with a larger zerg and just zerg them over, defense of any objective in this game right now is utterly pointless with how useless eige is currently and how OP Purge and Barrier are....

    These changes to siege will be the best changes ZOS has ever made to ESO and will actually not only allow defense of objectives being viable, but small scale 4v4 and 6v6 at resources with siege fire from both sides and seeing who cna outflank who will be common place.

    Yes playing with strategy and being forced to flank your opponents siege line instead of everyone just zerg stomping everything i think is a win-win.

    I think these changes will be great, and i look forward to them...i look forward to the day that actually have a "high ground" defensive advantage will actually be a tactical advantage for a change instead of the current just zerg stomp everything...just my 2 cents :)

    I want siege to help. I want a good group to set up defensive siege and use that advantage to beat me. I don't want them to set up siege, and than simply win because my group can't move, can't heal, can't sustain. Point and click to win is horrible gameplay for an action based mmo.

    But you can move, heal, sustain if you avoid siege. Right now, you don't need to do anything but stack and purge. Now I'm not completely on board with 6 seconds of unpurgable debuffs. Perhaps numbers can be adjusted. But overall, I see some good things with these changes.

    When pushing a choke in a keep, the whole point is it is a choke. if I can't move for shares, can't block or dodge for Stam reduction, can't heal for magica reduction and heal rebuffs, cannot purge these debuffs, what am I supposed to do? It's suicide and everyone knows it.

    There's only a few spots siege can fire at from in a keep..A lot of it can't hit the same spot or spots near the choke point..You'll have to time when ya go in...and maybe not rush all in at once (As in half go in to draw fire then the other half rush in right afterwards when they're moving their weapon to hit the people who just ran in)

    Going through a choke point thats well defended will be dangerous....compared to now where you just ignore it.

    It is still extremely dangerous as is. Pushing into keeps you can put one siege on flag, one on opposite postern, one breach mid stairs, one top breach stairs, and two and the U that can all be set to bombard the breach. As is if defenders know what they are doing a group is usually annihilated on the breach or shortly after.

    But most defenders would rather whine about ball groups and clamor for increased siege damage than watch what groups like Haxus do with un-buffed siege and a few ultis beneath oils.

    Are you seriously trying to claim a breech is extremely dangerous right now for a Ball Group?

    /facepalm

    Against anyone who knows what they are doing, yes. Turns out when you work together as a team and employ basic tactics a heavily defensible position can be ... wait for it... easily defended.

    You have a choke you can clog with siege and dump ultis on that your enemy MUST pass through. It's a defenders wet dream. That you don't recognize this is why I mostly don't trust your opinion in group play, as you clearly dont get even basic things like this.

    Having personally defended keeps with my "Zerg" of 8-12 people precisely because of siege and convenient chokes, I just don't get what the hell you've going on about

    The fact that your medium group successfuly defended a keep against larger numbers doesn't prouve anything. You simply faced disorganized pugs / groups / guilds. You didn't faced Vehemence. :smile:


    I mean, sure. I think you sometimes forget Vehemence wasn't always this way. We didn't clamor for siege buffs and nerfs to group skills, etc., to beat the guilds and groups that were beating us: we learned from the groups that were winning, and learned to win ourselves. Bombing the breach with siege as backup has been extremely effective for us as a group, and it's something I remember learning from Crystalize. He used to go down on the mid-stairs, meatbag across the way and at the top, oils on the lip, and just pour DPS on people coming in the breach. It doesn't take a lot to break the purge/barrier spam of a group if you do it right, I've seen good raids melted when a well-timed leap or meteor broke up their cycle and they never recovered from the debuffs/oil/fire and subsequent damage.

    I'm all kinds of fine with siege getting a buff. Eh, whatever. I can manage that. Sure, why not. But the buff amounts we're talking here are insane. The response to "spread out" is also kinda hilarious. Sure, I'll spread out my 20 people when running into a group of 40-50, that's gonna work out just fine. Surely, we won't be separated and dragged down by superior numbers except OF COURSE we will because that's the whole idea of an elite raid in this game: a collection of players that play together in such a way that their effectiveness is greater than the sum of all parts. Once you remove a group's ability to play as a team than you're not going to win outnumbered anymore.

    It's funny that you talk about spreading out your numbers (24+ group) against a group larger than yours. Seriously, how many times a night do you face larger numbers against your group? If you face larger numbers, you SHOULD have a major disadvantage. Especially when fighting openfield. It is the same for small/medium group fighting your large group, we have a disadvantage facing you openfield. During keep battles, sieges should have a major impact into the war as it was intended before this game got released.

    You fight in an area and people start deploying too many sieges against you? Spread out, move to a different location, use LoS or die. Simple enough.

    GoS does it really well. Even with a 24men group, they rarely ball up. They fight with a certain distance between each other and they win against skilled groups. This behaviour will help them a ton when new siege changes get in place.

    I'm at work so this will be fairly concise.

    GoS balls up plenty. Believe me, I fight them enough, ask Rylana. Against groups like mine they have strats that involve spreading out, but they certainly recondense when they want to hit us hard, or against groups that don't have as much DPS as mine. Remember, spreading out is a survival tactic, not a winning one. Winning in a group of any size is the same: focused dps. In a small man it's sustaining till you burst down the enemy healer, in raids it's sustaining/scattering until you recondense to aoe bomb.

    As to how many times I'm outnumbered, I'd say plenty. On Monday and Sunday of this week alone with 24 people I found myself fighting against 2-5x my number. I might have won at Aleswell too if not for lag, at the end there was simply no abilities going off, but until then we repelled groups upwards of 3x our size from the keeps and surrounding resources. On a regular night I find myself outnumbered pretty much anytime I hit a defended keep. If the people within the keep grouped up and used strategy I'd have a really tough time of it.

    In the end that's why I'm really bothered by these changes. Bulb and I wanted to effect change on the Map, we wanted to wipe big groups, defend keeps, take territory. So we learned macro strategy, built our small group of players into a competitive raid and adapted to multiple patches and metas. And we are effective at all sizes. I logged on the other day to hear zone complaining about an AD ball group terrorizing glademist, all the usual about invincible spam monkeys. Went over and killed them with 8 people and a meatbag. What stopped the 30 other people there from doing exactly that? A lack of organization, know how or skill.

    That's why this looks ugly to me. Gameplay mechanics aren't holding people back, there is no secret formula for success. But you and others in this thread talk about changes that will allow you to take on and defeat a group like mine and quite frankly you don't deserve to. If you want to beat a good guild, earn it. Build your group, learn strategy, time some stealth bombs. To everyone complaining you can't stop these "ball groups", good. You didn't build to beat them, they built themselves to beat you, and they're going to keep doing it until you stop complaining and decide to counter them.

    Or the other option, which is to complain until ZoS changes the game so some randoms in a keep are competitive with a fully optimized and organized raid. And than what's the point at all?

    As to me running around a keep for no reason, I'm game to see footage. I can't remember ever doing this unless I'm expecting incoming and am trying to keep my raid mobile.

    In the end, siege should have w counter. Everything in the game has a counter. Snares, healing, debuffs. roots, damage, shields, siege damage, etc. It makes for a decent meta. High damage groups forgo shields to burn opponents, sustain groups adapt by swapping to ground based damage reduction and heavy CC, which can than be countered by negates and stationary siege, etc. Whatever siege mechanics are added simply must have counters, otherwise they become stupidly overpowered and give anyone with the numbers to run them a rediculous advantage.

    Hell, you think keep takes are hard now, wait until an organized raid is defending a keep inner with a full siege deployment. It's going to be stupid, and the only way to take it from them will be ....

    .....

    wait for it....

    ... to stack bigger numbers yourself. Back to square *** one.

    All this wall of text sounds pretty fluid and nice but in the end, there is only one solution that you suggest. You want people to "gid gud" at the game and to form their own organized 24men ballgroup to challenge yours.

    Are we living in the same Cyrodiil ? Don't you see that the game can't support such gameplay at the moment ? First of all, ping spikes to 200ms just the fact that there are 40players on the screen (not even spamming abilities). Around a keep, it's even worse! Now you're saying that the only way that we should be able to counter a skilled organized group would be to accomplish the exact same gameplay and spike the server all the way up to 1200ms where CCs can't be broken, weapon bars can't be swapped, where alot of abilities such as streak, wrecking blow, leap, etc won't even register, where abilities such as Leap and Meteor can kill people with extreme falling damage, where people get rubberbanded all over the place?

    No thank you. And don't get me that crap that this is not your problem if Zenimax aren't able to fix their game. WE have to aknowledge the fact that WE are going to deal with this for a while and WE have to take measures to counter it.

    This being said, WE need a zerg buster that has three major objectives :

    1) Spread ball groups
    2) Help defending keep breaches
    3) Give a chance to small/medium group at overwhelming larger groups

    I understand that AOE cap and Dynamic Ultimate Regeneration are also huge factors but they are not as important as sieges during keep battles. And as Brian Wheeler said multiple times and I fully support his opinion even though it won't make everybody happy, sieges should be an important factor in Cyrodiil and right now, it is not.

    So next time, maybe bring suggestions and tweaks regarding the changes brought in the main post instead of elaborating about how bad they are.
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    “Small minds discuss people, average minds discuss events, and great minds discuss ideas.” -Eleanor Roosevelt
    • Fix Volendrung (spawn location - weapon white on the map causing the wielder to keep it forever - usable with emperorship)
    • Remove / Change CPs System, remove current CP/noCP campaigns and introduce one 30days with lock, one with no locks
    • Fix crashes when approaching a keep under attack because of bad / wrong rendering prioritization system
    • Change emperorship to value faction score points and not alliance points - see this and this
    • Fix long loading screens (mostly caused by players joining group out of rendering range)
    • Add 2 more quickslots to the wheel or add a different wheel for sieges weaponry only
    • Fix Balista Bolts not dealing damage on walls or doors if deployed at a certain place
    • Release bigger battlegrounds with 8 to 16 players per team and only two teams
    • Fix the permanent block animation - see examples : link1 link2 link3 link4 link5
    • Gives players 10 minutes to get back into Cyrodiil after relogging / crashing
    • Add a function to ignore the Claiming system of useless rewards
    • Improve the Mailing System / Rewards of the Worthy stacking
    • Assign specific group sizes to specific campaigns (24-16-8)
    • Make forward camps impossible to place near objectives
    • Make snares only available from ground effects abilities
    • Change emperorship to last minimum 24hours
    • Fix body sliding after cc breaking too quickly
    • Remove Block Casting through Battle Spirit
    • Fix the speed drop while jumping - see video
    • Fix loading screens when keeps upgrade
    • Fix Rams going crazy (spinning around)
    • Bring back dynamic ulti regeneration
    • Fix speed bug (abilities locked)
    • Introduce dynamic population
    • Lower population cap by 20%
    • Add Snare Immunity potions
    • Bring resurrection sickness
    • Fix character desync
    • Fix cc breaking bug
    • Fix gap closer bug
    • Fix health desync
    • Fix combat bug
    • Fix streak bug
    • Fix server lag
  • Talcyndl
    Talcyndl
    ✭✭✭✭✭
    maxjapank wrote: »
    I know that "popular" streamers are harping about "smart heals". But they have never played a healer from what I know. They don't know how much fun healing is in ESO.

    I wouldn't know - I prefer to play the game, not watch others play. :)

    I don't have an issue in principle with "smart heals." My point was simply that they make solving the problem of Blobs more difficult than simply removing AoE caps.
    Edited by Talcyndl on December 3, 2015 2:04AM
    Tal'gro Bol
    PvP Vice Officer [Retired] and Huscarl of Vokundein
    http://www.legend-gaming.net/vokundein/
  • CatchMeTrolling
    CatchMeTrolling
    ✭✭✭✭✭
    Non purgable meatbag is going to be a issue but I'm glad to see a damage increase hopefully it teaches people to stop zerg balling into a keep.
  • Satiar
    Satiar
    ✭✭✭✭✭
    ✭✭✭
    frozywozy wrote: »
    Satiar wrote: »
    frozywozy wrote: »
    Satiar wrote: »
    frozywozy wrote: »
    Satiar wrote: »
    @frozywozy

    Agreed, you know I have advocated for un-purgable siege for nearly a year now, and you were one of the first ones on here to see why it was necessary. It is necessary, Siege is useless in its current form.

    What many people don't understand is Siege has to be the zerg buster, thats its role, artillery is designed for. Its ridiclious these people can stand in concentrated siege fire and oil pots and not die. I saw a group of 20 get hit by 3 fire ballistas, a fire treb, and a cold harbor fire ballista all at nearly the same time right into the middle of their group and not a single person died, it didn't even make a scratch, thats just outright rubbish plain and simple.

    These people are not looking at the bigger picture, Siege has the following DISADVANTAGES:

    1. it can only be placed on perfectly flat surfaces
    2. around keeps and such the limit is 20
    3. while using the siege weapon your 5 abilities and ultimate can not be used without getting off the siege.
    4. While using the siege weapin you are a sitting duck with no defense, vulnerable to any one sneaking up and killing you.
    5. Siege weapons are slow to turn, have a slow fire rate, and their projectiles travel slowly to far away targets
    6 Have a slow reload rate
    7. Must be packed and unpacked
    8. Each one takes up an inventory slot
    9. Cost AP to buy
    10. Cost AP to repair
    11. Wear out pretty quick
    12. Can be destroyed

    There is 12 BIG disadvantages to using a siege weapon, its needs to have some benefits for all the drawbacks to using them. Right now the drawbacks far outweigh any advantage there is to using them.

    These coming changes will alleviate those drawbacks somewhat, and yes just charging through a breech or chokepoint like you can right now just ignoring siege fire will get you killed...it was probably meant to be this way from the beginning.....right now the only way to defend a keep is to drop off the walls with a larger zerg and just zerg them over, defense of any objective in this game right now is utterly pointless with how useless eige is currently and how OP Purge and Barrier are....

    These changes to siege will be the best changes ZOS has ever made to ESO and will actually not only allow defense of objectives being viable, but small scale 4v4 and 6v6 at resources with siege fire from both sides and seeing who cna outflank who will be common place.

    Yes playing with strategy and being forced to flank your opponents siege line instead of everyone just zerg stomping everything i think is a win-win.

    I think these changes will be great, and i look forward to them...i look forward to the day that actually have a "high ground" defensive advantage will actually be a tactical advantage for a change instead of the current just zerg stomp everything...just my 2 cents :)

    I want siege to help. I want a good group to set up defensive siege and use that advantage to beat me. I don't want them to set up siege, and than simply win because my group can't move, can't heal, can't sustain doesn't want to spread out . Point and click to win is horrible gameplay for an action based mmo.

    Here, fixed that for you. :smile:
    Oh right, I'll spread out while moving through a choke, why didnt I think of that?

    @Satiar - I understand that this thread has now 20pages+ of comments in a two days period. But I have read and aknowledged all of it. I've replied to several players telling me the same argument. The main reason why all the small group folks want to buff siege is to give us a chance to hold the ballgroup as long as possible to give a chance to reinforcements to arrive. In most scenarios, people try to siege a keep with low defense and this is totally right to do so.

    As I pointed out in different posts, when you siege a keep that is well defended already, you should not expect to capture it with only a medium group. You should need an army to get it. When the breach goes down and defenders properly deployed counter-sieges aiming at the breach, YOU SHOULD BE FORCED to pick between two options :

    1) You spread out into smaller groups and jump inside between each siege volley
    2) You get an additional wall down

    There is no "How am I supposed to spread out when going inside a choke point". If people are covering a choke point with sieges, you simply don't go into that choke point. Simple enough right? Siege > Ball group. I understand that the skill involved in using a siege is not at the same level as running an organized group. BUT the point to have sieges is to COUNTER organized groups trying to capture a keep without the necessity to have our own organized group.

    This solution could be temporary until Zenimax finds a way to improve the latency. Because right now, when two different 24men groups fight each other inside a keep, it is unplayable. Whoever have the more numbers win because it takes too much time to cc break, weapon swap and all kind of crap. I personally would like these siege changes to stay in place even if we don't have latency problems anymore. Because I don't think the only counter to a ballgroup should be a ballgroup. We need another zerg buster and since Prox det totally failed this purpose, siege will do it entirely.
    frozywozy wrote: »
    Satiar wrote: »
    Xsorus wrote: »
    Satiar wrote: »
    maxjapank wrote: »
    Satiar wrote: »
    @frozywozy

    Agreed, you know I have advocated for un-purgable siege for nearly a year now, and you were one of the first ones on here to see why it was necessary. It is necessary, Siege is useless in its current form.

    What many people don't understand is Siege has to be the zerg buster, thats its role, artillery is designed for. Its ridiclious these people can stand in concentrated siege fire and oil pots and not die. I saw a group of 20 get hit by 3 fire ballistas, a fire treb, and a cold harbor fire ballista all at nearly the same time right into the middle of their group and not a single person died, it didn't even make a scratch, thats just outright rubbish plain and simple.

    These people are not looking at the bigger picture, Siege has the following DISADVANTAGES:

    1. it can only be placed on perfectly flat surfaces
    2. around keeps and such the limit is 20
    3. while using the siege weapon your 5 abilities and ultimate can not be used without getting off the siege.
    4. While using the siege weapin you are a sitting duck with no defense, vulnerable to any one sneaking up and killing you.
    5. Siege weapons are slow to turn, have a slow fire rate, and their projectiles travel slowly to far away targets
    6 Have a slow reload rate
    7. Must be packed and unpacked
    8. Each one takes up an inventory slot
    9. Cost AP to buy
    10. Cost AP to repair
    11. Wear out pretty quick
    12. Can be destroyed

    There is 12 BIG disadvantages to using a siege weapon, its needs to have some benefits for all the drawbacks to using them. Right now the drawbacks far outweigh any advantage there is to using them.

    These coming changes will alleviate those drawbacks somewhat, and yes just charging through a breech or chokepoint like you can right now just ignoring siege fire will get you killed...it was probably meant to be this way from the beginning.....right now the only way to defend a keep is to drop off the walls with a larger zerg and just zerg them over, defense of any objective in this game right now is utterly pointless with how useless eige is currently and how OP Purge and Barrier are....

    These changes to siege will be the best changes ZOS has ever made to ESO and will actually not only allow defense of objectives being viable, but small scale 4v4 and 6v6 at resources with siege fire from both sides and seeing who cna outflank who will be common place.

    Yes playing with strategy and being forced to flank your opponents siege line instead of everyone just zerg stomping everything i think is a win-win.

    I think these changes will be great, and i look forward to them...i look forward to the day that actually have a "high ground" defensive advantage will actually be a tactical advantage for a change instead of the current just zerg stomp everything...just my 2 cents :)

    I want siege to help. I want a good group to set up defensive siege and use that advantage to beat me. I don't want them to set up siege, and than simply win because my group can't move, can't heal, can't sustain. Point and click to win is horrible gameplay for an action based mmo.

    But you can move, heal, sustain if you avoid siege. Right now, you don't need to do anything but stack and purge. Now I'm not completely on board with 6 seconds of unpurgable debuffs. Perhaps numbers can be adjusted. But overall, I see some good things with these changes.

    When pushing a choke in a keep, the whole point is it is a choke. if I can't move for shares, can't block or dodge for Stam reduction, can't heal for magica reduction and heal rebuffs, cannot purge these debuffs, what am I supposed to do? It's suicide and everyone knows it.

    There's only a few spots siege can fire at from in a keep..A lot of it can't hit the same spot or spots near the choke point..You'll have to time when ya go in...and maybe not rush all in at once (As in half go in to draw fire then the other half rush in right afterwards when they're moving their weapon to hit the people who just ran in)

    Going through a choke point thats well defended will be dangerous....compared to now where you just ignore it.

    It is still extremely dangerous as is. Pushing into keeps you can put one siege on flag, one on opposite postern, one breach mid stairs, one top breach stairs, and two and the U that can all be set to bombard the breach. As is if defenders know what they are doing a group is usually annihilated on the breach or shortly after.

    But most defenders would rather whine about ball groups and clamor for increased siege damage than watch what groups like Haxus do with un-buffed siege and a few ultis beneath oils.

    Are you seriously claiming that sieges inside keeps are dangerous as it is right now? You must be kidding me. You are one of the few groups who don't even bother going straight on flags when you get inside an inner. Often I see your group running up the stairs to the back flag to the inner breach, and up the stairs again doing your lil maneuvers for 5minutes straight, killing people NOT because it is necessary and because you risk wiping BUT for the show and for the extra APs, even if you will never admit it.

    Siege does absolutely nothing and bring no threat whatsoever to your 4-5 barriers rotation, purge and regen maneuver spammers 24men group. Don't even try.. ;)

    Wait what?

    How I take a keep depends entirely on who is inside it. There are several ways to play a keep take. You can push through to flags and force an enemy to engage you there, you can go up far or near side stairs and attempt to control the top, you can paintrain around to beat down resistance before taking flags. I'll never deny trying to get my guys some AP and kills, but serious keep takes with serious resistance are entirely different.

    Siege on its own isn't going to kill me, obviously. I have 24 people specced to heal, purge and maintain the raid. if any random person could put siege on me and ruin me, that'd be silly. What ruins me in keep takes is a well-coordinated group using their defensive choke to force me into a bad situation. Honestly, the main guild that does this now is Haxus. Most other groups try to bomb me on back flag, or on front flag, or at the top of the stairs-- meh. I'd say 90% of my keep wipes come from getting ult-dumped in the breach. All it takes is one good burst of DPS and CC there, and suddenly everything catches up: the oils, the meatbags, the fire trebs/ballista. And than we die, and it's tragic.

    @Satiar - Like I've said in my post, it is easy to see the difference between a large group going upstair to clear the oils, going on the flags to flip the keep, etc. Alot of times, when I see you guys taking Chalman, this is NOT what you do. You spend 5 minutes running arround the inner keep to farm people for the show, not because they apply any threat whatsoever to you. Siege is a joke as it is. I fire your guys with meatbags, fire balistas and what are the results? As soon as my siege reach your guys, there is another barrier popping up.
    Can most people do it to us? Yes, but they don't. You have no idea how many times I've been defending a keep or outpost on DC and seen everyone huddled upstairs and pounding the breach with siege as if that's supposed to do something. Siege is a tool, a force amplifier, something you use to make your group's defensive position stronger. Buffing it to godly levels because you can't be bothered to learn how to use your other tools (your group) in addition to using point and click siege is just silly.

    This thread is not a patch note. This thread is an open discussion opened by Brian Wheeler months in advance to hear our feedbacks and suggestions. Like most people, including me pointed out, the siege buffs are overkilled. I have given several suggestions to tweak it down but in the end, the UTILITY of the sieges HAVE to change. It is not only a matter of damage.

    My suggestions, again, in case you missed it :

    1) Meatbag and oil catapult debuffs/snares SHOULD be purgable, but not with any morph of Purge. Purge should be used only to remove player debuffs/snares. Cleansing Ritual should remove every negative effect. It would require individual player interaction using the synergy himself.

    2) Oil catapult / Lightning balista should deal only 2k damage (for testing purposes - adjust if needed afterward)

    3) Retreating Maneuvers should NOT remove or give immunity to siege snares (only player snares). Charging Maneuvers should remove siege snares but NOT give immunity.
    Satiar wrote: »
    Xsorus wrote: »
    Satiar wrote: »
    Xsorus wrote: »
    Satiar wrote: »
    maxjapank wrote: »
    Satiar wrote: »
    @frozywozy

    Agreed, you know I have advocated for un-purgable siege for nearly a year now, and you were one of the first ones on here to see why it was necessary. It is necessary, Siege is useless in its current form.

    What many people don't understand is Siege has to be the zerg buster, thats its role, artillery is designed for. Its ridiclious these people can stand in concentrated siege fire and oil pots and not die. I saw a group of 20 get hit by 3 fire ballistas, a fire treb, and a cold harbor fire ballista all at nearly the same time right into the middle of their group and not a single person died, it didn't even make a scratch, thats just outright rubbish plain and simple.

    These people are not looking at the bigger picture, Siege has the following DISADVANTAGES:

    1. it can only be placed on perfectly flat surfaces
    2. around keeps and such the limit is 20
    3. while using the siege weapon your 5 abilities and ultimate can not be used without getting off the siege.
    4. While using the siege weapin you are a sitting duck with no defense, vulnerable to any one sneaking up and killing you.
    5. Siege weapons are slow to turn, have a slow fire rate, and their projectiles travel slowly to far away targets
    6 Have a slow reload rate
    7. Must be packed and unpacked
    8. Each one takes up an inventory slot
    9. Cost AP to buy
    10. Cost AP to repair
    11. Wear out pretty quick
    12. Can be destroyed

    There is 12 BIG disadvantages to using a siege weapon, its needs to have some benefits for all the drawbacks to using them. Right now the drawbacks far outweigh any advantage there is to using them.

    These coming changes will alleviate those drawbacks somewhat, and yes just charging through a breech or chokepoint like you can right now just ignoring siege fire will get you killed...it was probably meant to be this way from the beginning.....right now the only way to defend a keep is to drop off the walls with a larger zerg and just zerg them over, defense of any objective in this game right now is utterly pointless with how useless eige is currently and how OP Purge and Barrier are....

    These changes to siege will be the best changes ZOS has ever made to ESO and will actually not only allow defense of objectives being viable, but small scale 4v4 and 6v6 at resources with siege fire from both sides and seeing who cna outflank who will be common place.

    Yes playing with strategy and being forced to flank your opponents siege line instead of everyone just zerg stomping everything i think is a win-win.

    I think these changes will be great, and i look forward to them...i look forward to the day that actually have a "high ground" defensive advantage will actually be a tactical advantage for a change instead of the current just zerg stomp everything...just my 2 cents :)

    I want siege to help. I want a good group to set up defensive siege and use that advantage to beat me. I don't want them to set up siege, and than simply win because my group can't move, can't heal, can't sustain. Point and click to win is horrible gameplay for an action based mmo.

    But you can move, heal, sustain if you avoid siege. Right now, you don't need to do anything but stack and purge. Now I'm not completely on board with 6 seconds of unpurgable debuffs. Perhaps numbers can be adjusted. But overall, I see some good things with these changes.

    When pushing a choke in a keep, the whole point is it is a choke. if I can't move for shares, can't block or dodge for Stam reduction, can't heal for magica reduction and heal rebuffs, cannot purge these debuffs, what am I supposed to do? It's suicide and everyone knows it.

    There's only a few spots siege can fire at from in a keep..A lot of it can't hit the same spot or spots near the choke point..You'll have to time when ya go in...and maybe not rush all in at once (As in half go in to draw fire then the other half rush in right afterwards when they're moving their weapon to hit the people who just ran in)

    Going through a choke point thats well defended will be dangerous....compared to now where you just ignore it.

    It is still extremely dangerous as is. Pushing into keeps you can put one siege on flag, one on opposite postern, one breach mid stairs, one top breach stairs, and two and the U that can all be set to bombard the breach. As is if defenders know what they are doing a group is usually annihilated on the breach or shortly after.

    But most defenders would rather whine about ball groups and clamor for increased siege damage than watch what groups like Haxus do with un-buffed siege and a few ultis beneath oils.

    Are you seriously trying to claim a breech is extremely dangerous right now for a Ball Group?

    /facepalm

    Against anyone who knows what they are doing, yes. Turns out when you work together as a team and employ basic tactics a heavily defensible position can be ... wait for it... easily defended.

    You have a choke you can clog with siege and dump ultis on that your enemy MUST pass through. It's a defenders wet dream. That you don't recognize this is why I mostly don't trust your opinion in group play, as you clearly dont get even basic things like this.

    Having personally defended keeps with my "Zerg" of 8-12 people precisely because of siege and convenient chokes, I just don't get what the hell you've going on about

    The fact that your medium group successfuly defended a keep against larger numbers doesn't prouve anything. You simply faced disorganized pugs / groups / guilds. You didn't faced Vehemence. :smile:


    I mean, sure. I think you sometimes forget Vehemence wasn't always this way. We didn't clamor for siege buffs and nerfs to group skills, etc., to beat the guilds and groups that were beating us: we learned from the groups that were winning, and learned to win ourselves. Bombing the breach with siege as backup has been extremely effective for us as a group, and it's something I remember learning from Crystalize. He used to go down on the mid-stairs, meatbag across the way and at the top, oils on the lip, and just pour DPS on people coming in the breach. It doesn't take a lot to break the purge/barrier spam of a group if you do it right, I've seen good raids melted when a well-timed leap or meteor broke up their cycle and they never recovered from the debuffs/oil/fire and subsequent damage.

    I'm all kinds of fine with siege getting a buff. Eh, whatever. I can manage that. Sure, why not. But the buff amounts we're talking here are insane. The response to "spread out" is also kinda hilarious. Sure, I'll spread out my 20 people when running into a group of 40-50, that's gonna work out just fine. Surely, we won't be separated and dragged down by superior numbers except OF COURSE we will because that's the whole idea of an elite raid in this game: a collection of players that play together in such a way that their effectiveness is greater than the sum of all parts. Once you remove a group's ability to play as a team than you're not going to win outnumbered anymore.

    It's funny that you talk about spreading out your numbers (24+ group) against a group larger than yours. Seriously, how many times a night do you face larger numbers against your group? If you face larger numbers, you SHOULD have a major disadvantage. Especially when fighting openfield. It is the same for small/medium group fighting your large group, we have a disadvantage facing you openfield. During keep battles, sieges should have a major impact into the war as it was intended before this game got released.

    You fight in an area and people start deploying too many sieges against you? Spread out, move to a different location, use LoS or die. Simple enough.

    GoS does it really well. Even with a 24men group, they rarely ball up. They fight with a certain distance between each other and they win against skilled groups. This behaviour will help them a ton when new siege changes get in place.

    I'm at work so this will be fairly concise.

    GoS balls up plenty. Believe me, I fight them enough, ask Rylana. Against groups like mine they have strats that involve spreading out, but they certainly recondense when they want to hit us hard, or against groups that don't have as much DPS as mine. Remember, spreading out is a survival tactic, not a winning one. Winning in a group of any size is the same: focused dps. In a small man it's sustaining till you burst down the enemy healer, in raids it's sustaining/scattering until you recondense to aoe bomb.

    As to how many times I'm outnumbered, I'd say plenty. On Monday and Sunday of this week alone with 24 people I found myself fighting against 2-5x my number. I might have won at Aleswell too if not for lag, at the end there was simply no abilities going off, but until then we repelled groups upwards of 3x our size from the keeps and surrounding resources. On a regular night I find myself outnumbered pretty much anytime I hit a defended keep. If the people within the keep grouped up and used strategy I'd have a really tough time of it.

    In the end that's why I'm really bothered by these changes. Bulb and I wanted to effect change on the Map, we wanted to wipe big groups, defend keeps, take territory. So we learned macro strategy, built our small group of players into a competitive raid and adapted to multiple patches and metas. And we are effective at all sizes. I logged on the other day to hear zone complaining about an AD ball group terrorizing glademist, all the usual about invincible spam monkeys. Went over and killed them with 8 people and a meatbag. What stopped the 30 other people there from doing exactly that? A lack of organization, know how or skill.

    That's why this looks ugly to me. Gameplay mechanics aren't holding people back, there is no secret formula for success. But you and others in this thread talk about changes that will allow you to take on and defeat a group like mine and quite frankly you don't deserve to. If you want to beat a good guild, earn it. Build your group, learn strategy, time some stealth bombs. To everyone complaining you can't stop these "ball groups", good. You didn't build to beat them, they built themselves to beat you, and they're going to keep doing it until you stop complaining and decide to counter them.

    Or the other option, which is to complain until ZoS changes the game so some randoms in a keep are competitive with a fully optimized and organized raid. And than what's the point at all?

    As to me running around a keep for no reason, I'm game to see footage. I can't remember ever doing this unless I'm expecting incoming and am trying to keep my raid mobile.

    In the end, siege should have w counter. Everything in the game has a counter. Snares, healing, debuffs. roots, damage, shields, siege damage, etc. It makes for a decent meta. High damage groups forgo shields to burn opponents, sustain groups adapt by swapping to ground based damage reduction and heavy CC, which can than be countered by negates and stationary siege, etc. Whatever siege mechanics are added simply must have counters, otherwise they become stupidly overpowered and give anyone with the numbers to run them a rediculous advantage.

    Hell, you think keep takes are hard now, wait until an organized raid is defending a keep inner with a full siege deployment. It's going to be stupid, and the only way to take it from them will be ....

    .....

    wait for it....

    ... to stack bigger numbers yourself. Back to square *** one.

    All this wall of text sounds pretty fluid and nice but in the end, there is only one solution that you suggest. You want people to "gid gud" at the game and to form their own organized 24men ballgroup to challenge yours.

    Are we living in the same Cyrodiil ? Don't you see that the game can't support such gameplay at the moment ? First of all, ping spikes to 200ms just the fact that there are 40players on the screen (not even spamming abilities). Around a keep, it's even worse! Now you're saying that the only way that we should be able to counter a skilled organized group would be to accomplish the exact same gameplay and spike the server all the way up to 1200ms where CCs can't be broken, weapon bars can't be swapped, where alot of abilities such as streak, wrecking blow, leap, etc won't even register, where abilities such as Leap and Meteor can kill people with extreme falling damage, where people get rubberbanded all over the place?

    No thank you. And don't get me that crap that this is not your problem if Zenimax aren't able to fix their game. WE have to aknowledge the fact that WE are going to deal with this for a while and WE have to take measures to counter it.

    This being said, WE need a zerg buster that has three major objectives :

    1) Spread ball groups
    2) Help defending keep breaches
    3) Give a chance to small/medium group at overwhelming larger groups

    I understand that AOE cap and Dynamic Ultimate Regeneration are also huge factors but they are not as important as sieges during keep battles. And as Brian Wheeler said multiple times and I fully support his opinion even though it won't make everybody happy, sieges should be an important factor in Cyrodiil and right now, it is not.

    So next time, maybe bring suggestions and tweaks regarding the changes brought in the main post instead of elaborating about how bad they are.

    So no real argument against my points, just a general appeal for solutions.

    I don't have to bring up my own ideas here to point out how suggested ideas are game breaking. To try to use that as the standard for discourse in order to invalidate my opinion is silly.

    Your own suggestions are things I have a hard time taking seriously, considering you've openly stated that you want it so heavily tilted in your favor that defending a keep against a good guild should be easily doable by a few randoms with siege. This is a comical level of bias.
    Vehemence -- Commander and Raid Lead -- Tri-faction PvP
    Knights Paravant -- Co-GM and Raid Lead -- AD Greyhost



  • bowmanz607
    bowmanz607
    ✭✭✭✭✭
    frozywozy wrote: »
    Satiar wrote: »
    frozywozy wrote: »
    Satiar wrote: »
    frozywozy wrote: »
    Satiar wrote: »
    @frozywozy

    Agreed, you know I have advocated for un-purgable siege for nearly a year now, and you were one of the first ones on here to see why it was necessary. It is necessary, Siege is useless in its current form.

    What many people don't understand is Siege has to be the zerg buster, thats its role, artillery is designed for. Its ridiclious these people can stand in concentrated siege fire and oil pots and not die. I saw a group of 20 get hit by 3 fire ballistas, a fire treb, and a cold harbor fire ballista all at nearly the same time right into the middle of their group and not a single person died, it didn't even make a scratch, thats just outright rubbish plain and simple.

    These people are not looking at the bigger picture, Siege has the following DISADVANTAGES:

    1. it can only be placed on perfectly flat surfaces
    2. around keeps and such the limit is 20
    3. while using the siege weapon your 5 abilities and ultimate can not be used without getting off the siege.
    4. While using the siege weapin you are a sitting duck with no defense, vulnerable to any one sneaking up and killing you.
    5. Siege weapons are slow to turn, have a slow fire rate, and their projectiles travel slowly to far away targets
    6 Have a slow reload rate
    7. Must be packed and unpacked
    8. Each one takes up an inventory slot
    9. Cost AP to buy
    10. Cost AP to repair
    11. Wear out pretty quick
    12. Can be destroyed

    There is 12 BIG disadvantages to using a siege weapon, its needs to have some benefits for all the drawbacks to using them. Right now the drawbacks far outweigh any advantage there is to using them.

    These coming changes will alleviate those drawbacks somewhat, and yes just charging through a breech or chokepoint like you can right now just ignoring siege fire will get you killed...it was probably meant to be this way from the beginning.....right now the only way to defend a keep is to drop off the walls with a larger zerg and just zerg them over, defense of any objective in this game right now is utterly pointless with how useless eige is currently and how OP Purge and Barrier are....

    These changes to siege will be the best changes ZOS has ever made to ESO and will actually not only allow defense of objectives being viable, but small scale 4v4 and 6v6 at resources with siege fire from both sides and seeing who cna outflank who will be common place.

    Yes playing with strategy and being forced to flank your opponents siege line instead of everyone just zerg stomping everything i think is a win-win.

    I think these changes will be great, and i look forward to them...i look forward to the day that actually have a "high ground" defensive advantage will actually be a tactical advantage for a change instead of the current just zerg stomp everything...just my 2 cents :)

    I want siege to help. I want a good group to set up defensive siege and use that advantage to beat me. I don't want them to set up siege, and than simply win because my group can't move, can't heal, can't sustain doesn't want to spread out . Point and click to win is horrible gameplay for an action based mmo.

    Here, fixed that for you. :smile:
    Oh right, I'll spread out while moving through a choke, why didnt I think of that?

    @Satiar - I understand that this thread has now 20pages+ of comments in a two days period. But I have read and aknowledged all of it. I've replied to several players telling me the same argument. The main reason why all the small group folks want to buff siege is to give us a chance to hold the ballgroup as long as possible to give a chance to reinforcements to arrive. In most scenarios, people try to siege a keep with low defense and this is totally right to do so.

    As I pointed out in different posts, when you siege a keep that is well defended already, you should not expect to capture it with only a medium group. You should need an army to get it. When the breach goes down and defenders properly deployed counter-sieges aiming at the breach, YOU SHOULD BE FORCED to pick between two options :

    1) You spread out into smaller groups and jump inside between each siege volley
    2) You get an additional wall down

    There is no "How am I supposed to spread out when going inside a choke point". If people are covering a choke point with sieges, you simply don't go into that choke point. Simple enough right? Siege > Ball group. I understand that the skill involved in using a siege is not at the same level as running an organized group. BUT the point to have sieges is to COUNTER organized groups trying to capture a keep without the necessity to have our own organized group.

    This solution could be temporary until Zenimax finds a way to improve the latency. Because right now, when two different 24men groups fight each other inside a keep, it is unplayable. Whoever have the more numbers win because it takes too much time to cc break, weapon swap and all kind of crap. I personally would like these siege changes to stay in place even if we don't have latency problems anymore. Because I don't think the only counter to a ballgroup should be a ballgroup. We need another zerg buster and since Prox det totally failed this purpose, siege will do it entirely.
    frozywozy wrote: »
    Satiar wrote: »
    Xsorus wrote: »
    Satiar wrote: »
    maxjapank wrote: »
    Satiar wrote: »
    @frozywozy

    Agreed, you know I have advocated for un-purgable siege for nearly a year now, and you were one of the first ones on here to see why it was necessary. It is necessary, Siege is useless in its current form.

    What many people don't understand is Siege has to be the zerg buster, thats its role, artillery is designed for. Its ridiclious these people can stand in concentrated siege fire and oil pots and not die. I saw a group of 20 get hit by 3 fire ballistas, a fire treb, and a cold harbor fire ballista all at nearly the same time right into the middle of their group and not a single person died, it didn't even make a scratch, thats just outright rubbish plain and simple.

    These people are not looking at the bigger picture, Siege has the following DISADVANTAGES:

    1. it can only be placed on perfectly flat surfaces
    2. around keeps and such the limit is 20
    3. while using the siege weapon your 5 abilities and ultimate can not be used without getting off the siege.
    4. While using the siege weapin you are a sitting duck with no defense, vulnerable to any one sneaking up and killing you.
    5. Siege weapons are slow to turn, have a slow fire rate, and their projectiles travel slowly to far away targets
    6 Have a slow reload rate
    7. Must be packed and unpacked
    8. Each one takes up an inventory slot
    9. Cost AP to buy
    10. Cost AP to repair
    11. Wear out pretty quick
    12. Can be destroyed

    There is 12 BIG disadvantages to using a siege weapon, its needs to have some benefits for all the drawbacks to using them. Right now the drawbacks far outweigh any advantage there is to using them.

    These coming changes will alleviate those drawbacks somewhat, and yes just charging through a breech or chokepoint like you can right now just ignoring siege fire will get you killed...it was probably meant to be this way from the beginning.....right now the only way to defend a keep is to drop off the walls with a larger zerg and just zerg them over, defense of any objective in this game right now is utterly pointless with how useless eige is currently and how OP Purge and Barrier are....

    These changes to siege will be the best changes ZOS has ever made to ESO and will actually not only allow defense of objectives being viable, but small scale 4v4 and 6v6 at resources with siege fire from both sides and seeing who cna outflank who will be common place.

    Yes playing with strategy and being forced to flank your opponents siege line instead of everyone just zerg stomping everything i think is a win-win.

    I think these changes will be great, and i look forward to them...i look forward to the day that actually have a "high ground" defensive advantage will actually be a tactical advantage for a change instead of the current just zerg stomp everything...just my 2 cents :)

    I want siege to help. I want a good group to set up defensive siege and use that advantage to beat me. I don't want them to set up siege, and than simply win because my group can't move, can't heal, can't sustain. Point and click to win is horrible gameplay for an action based mmo.

    But you can move, heal, sustain if you avoid siege. Right now, you don't need to do anything but stack and purge. Now I'm not completely on board with 6 seconds of unpurgable debuffs. Perhaps numbers can be adjusted. But overall, I see some good things with these changes.

    When pushing a choke in a keep, the whole point is it is a choke. if I can't move for shares, can't block or dodge for Stam reduction, can't heal for magica reduction and heal rebuffs, cannot purge these debuffs, what am I supposed to do? It's suicide and everyone knows it.

    There's only a few spots siege can fire at from in a keep..A lot of it can't hit the same spot or spots near the choke point..You'll have to time when ya go in...and maybe not rush all in at once (As in half go in to draw fire then the other half rush in right afterwards when they're moving their weapon to hit the people who just ran in)

    Going through a choke point thats well defended will be dangerous....compared to now where you just ignore it.

    It is still extremely dangerous as is. Pushing into keeps you can put one siege on flag, one on opposite postern, one breach mid stairs, one top breach stairs, and two and the U that can all be set to bombard the breach. As is if defenders know what they are doing a group is usually annihilated on the breach or shortly after.

    But most defenders would rather whine about ball groups and clamor for increased siege damage than watch what groups like Haxus do with un-buffed siege and a few ultis beneath oils.

    Are you seriously claiming that sieges inside keeps are dangerous as it is right now? You must be kidding me. You are one of the few groups who don't even bother going straight on flags when you get inside an inner. Often I see your group running up the stairs to the back flag to the inner breach, and up the stairs again doing your lil maneuvers for 5minutes straight, killing people NOT because it is necessary and because you risk wiping BUT for the show and for the extra APs, even if you will never admit it.

    Siege does absolutely nothing and bring no threat whatsoever to your 4-5 barriers rotation, purge and regen maneuver spammers 24men group. Don't even try.. ;)

    Wait what?

    How I take a keep depends entirely on who is inside it. There are several ways to play a keep take. You can push through to flags and force an enemy to engage you there, you can go up far or near side stairs and attempt to control the top, you can paintrain around to beat down resistance before taking flags. I'll never deny trying to get my guys some AP and kills, but serious keep takes with serious resistance are entirely different.

    Siege on its own isn't going to kill me, obviously. I have 24 people specced to heal, purge and maintain the raid. if any random person could put siege on me and ruin me, that'd be silly. What ruins me in keep takes is a well-coordinated group using their defensive choke to force me into a bad situation. Honestly, the main guild that does this now is Haxus. Most other groups try to bomb me on back flag, or on front flag, or at the top of the stairs-- meh. I'd say 90% of my keep wipes come from getting ult-dumped in the breach. All it takes is one good burst of DPS and CC there, and suddenly everything catches up: the oils, the meatbags, the fire trebs/ballista. And than we die, and it's tragic.

    @Satiar - Like I've said in my post, it is easy to see the difference between a large group going upstair to clear the oils, going on the flags to flip the keep, etc. Alot of times, when I see you guys taking Chalman, this is NOT what you do. You spend 5 minutes running arround the inner keep to farm people for the show, not because they apply any threat whatsoever to you. Siege is a joke as it is. I fire your guys with meatbags, fire balistas and what are the results? As soon as my siege reach your guys, there is another barrier popping up.
    Can most people do it to us? Yes, but they don't. You have no idea how many times I've been defending a keep or outpost on DC and seen everyone huddled upstairs and pounding the breach with siege as if that's supposed to do something. Siege is a tool, a force amplifier, something you use to make your group's defensive position stronger. Buffing it to godly levels because you can't be bothered to learn how to use your other tools (your group) in addition to using point and click siege is just silly.

    This thread is not a patch note. This thread is an open discussion opened by Brian Wheeler months in advance to hear our feedbacks and suggestions. Like most people, including me pointed out, the siege buffs are overkilled. I have given several suggestions to tweak it down but in the end, the UTILITY of the sieges HAVE to change. It is not only a matter of damage.

    My suggestions, again, in case you missed it :

    1) Meatbag and oil catapult debuffs/snares SHOULD be purgable, but not with any morph of Purge. Purge should be used only to remove player debuffs/snares. Cleansing Ritual should remove every negative effect. It would require individual player interaction using the synergy himself.

    2) Oil catapult / Lightning balista should deal only 2k damage (for testing purposes - adjust if needed afterward)

    3) Retreating Maneuvers should NOT remove or give immunity to siege snares (only player snares). Charging Maneuvers should remove siege snares but NOT give immunity.
    Satiar wrote: »
    Xsorus wrote: »
    Satiar wrote: »
    Xsorus wrote: »
    Satiar wrote: »
    maxjapank wrote: »
    Satiar wrote: »
    @frozywozy

    Agreed, you know I have advocated for un-purgable siege for nearly a year now, and you were one of the first ones on here to see why it was necessary. It is necessary, Siege is useless in its current form.

    What many people don't understand is Siege has to be the zerg buster, thats its role, artillery is designed for. Its ridiclious these people can stand in concentrated siege fire and oil pots and not die. I saw a group of 20 get hit by 3 fire ballistas, a fire treb, and a cold harbor fire ballista all at nearly the same time right into the middle of their group and not a single person died, it didn't even make a scratch, thats just outright rubbish plain and simple.

    These people are not looking at the bigger picture, Siege has the following DISADVANTAGES:

    1. it can only be placed on perfectly flat surfaces
    2. around keeps and such the limit is 20
    3. while using the siege weapon your 5 abilities and ultimate can not be used without getting off the siege.
    4. While using the siege weapin you are a sitting duck with no defense, vulnerable to any one sneaking up and killing you.
    5. Siege weapons are slow to turn, have a slow fire rate, and their projectiles travel slowly to far away targets
    6 Have a slow reload rate
    7. Must be packed and unpacked
    8. Each one takes up an inventory slot
    9. Cost AP to buy
    10. Cost AP to repair
    11. Wear out pretty quick
    12. Can be destroyed

    There is 12 BIG disadvantages to using a siege weapon, its needs to have some benefits for all the drawbacks to using them. Right now the drawbacks far outweigh any advantage there is to using them.

    These coming changes will alleviate those drawbacks somewhat, and yes just charging through a breech or chokepoint like you can right now just ignoring siege fire will get you killed...it was probably meant to be this way from the beginning.....right now the only way to defend a keep is to drop off the walls with a larger zerg and just zerg them over, defense of any objective in this game right now is utterly pointless with how useless eige is currently and how OP Purge and Barrier are....

    These changes to siege will be the best changes ZOS has ever made to ESO and will actually not only allow defense of objectives being viable, but small scale 4v4 and 6v6 at resources with siege fire from both sides and seeing who cna outflank who will be common place.

    Yes playing with strategy and being forced to flank your opponents siege line instead of everyone just zerg stomping everything i think is a win-win.

    I think these changes will be great, and i look forward to them...i look forward to the day that actually have a "high ground" defensive advantage will actually be a tactical advantage for a change instead of the current just zerg stomp everything...just my 2 cents :)

    I want siege to help. I want a good group to set up defensive siege and use that advantage to beat me. I don't want them to set up siege, and than simply win because my group can't move, can't heal, can't sustain. Point and click to win is horrible gameplay for an action based mmo.

    But you can move, heal, sustain if you avoid siege. Right now, you don't need to do anything but stack and purge. Now I'm not completely on board with 6 seconds of unpurgable debuffs. Perhaps numbers can be adjusted. But overall, I see some good things with these changes.

    When pushing a choke in a keep, the whole point is it is a choke. if I can't move for shares, can't block or dodge for Stam reduction, can't heal for magica reduction and heal rebuffs, cannot purge these debuffs, what am I supposed to do? It's suicide and everyone knows it.

    There's only a few spots siege can fire at from in a keep..A lot of it can't hit the same spot or spots near the choke point..You'll have to time when ya go in...and maybe not rush all in at once (As in half go in to draw fire then the other half rush in right afterwards when they're moving their weapon to hit the people who just ran in)

    Going through a choke point thats well defended will be dangerous....compared to now where you just ignore it.

    It is still extremely dangerous as is. Pushing into keeps you can put one siege on flag, one on opposite postern, one breach mid stairs, one top breach stairs, and two and the U that can all be set to bombard the breach. As is if defenders know what they are doing a group is usually annihilated on the breach or shortly after.

    But most defenders would rather whine about ball groups and clamor for increased siege damage than watch what groups like Haxus do with un-buffed siege and a few ultis beneath oils.

    Are you seriously trying to claim a breech is extremely dangerous right now for a Ball Group?

    /facepalm

    Against anyone who knows what they are doing, yes. Turns out when you work together as a team and employ basic tactics a heavily defensible position can be ... wait for it... easily defended.

    You have a choke you can clog with siege and dump ultis on that your enemy MUST pass through. It's a defenders wet dream. That you don't recognize this is why I mostly don't trust your opinion in group play, as you clearly dont get even basic things like this.

    Having personally defended keeps with my "Zerg" of 8-12 people precisely because of siege and convenient chokes, I just don't get what the hell you've going on about

    The fact that your medium group successfuly defended a keep against larger numbers doesn't prouve anything. You simply faced disorganized pugs / groups / guilds. You didn't faced Vehemence. :smile:


    I mean, sure. I think you sometimes forget Vehemence wasn't always this way. We didn't clamor for siege buffs and nerfs to group skills, etc., to beat the guilds and groups that were beating us: we learned from the groups that were winning, and learned to win ourselves. Bombing the breach with siege as backup has been extremely effective for us as a group, and it's something I remember learning from Crystalize. He used to go down on the mid-stairs, meatbag across the way and at the top, oils on the lip, and just pour DPS on people coming in the breach. It doesn't take a lot to break the purge/barrier spam of a group if you do it right, I've seen good raids melted when a well-timed leap or meteor broke up their cycle and they never recovered from the debuffs/oil/fire and subsequent damage.

    I'm all kinds of fine with siege getting a buff. Eh, whatever. I can manage that. Sure, why not. But the buff amounts we're talking here are insane. The response to "spread out" is also kinda hilarious. Sure, I'll spread out my 20 people when running into a group of 40-50, that's gonna work out just fine. Surely, we won't be separated and dragged down by superior numbers except OF COURSE we will because that's the whole idea of an elite raid in this game: a collection of players that play together in such a way that their effectiveness is greater than the sum of all parts. Once you remove a group's ability to play as a team than you're not going to win outnumbered anymore.

    It's funny that you talk about spreading out your numbers (24+ group) against a group larger than yours. Seriously, how many times a night do you face larger numbers against your group? If you face larger numbers, you SHOULD have a major disadvantage. Especially when fighting openfield. It is the same for small/medium group fighting your large group, we have a disadvantage facing you openfield. During keep battles, sieges should have a major impact into the war as it was intended before this game got released.

    You fight in an area and people start deploying too many sieges against you? Spread out, move to a different location, use LoS or die. Simple enough.

    GoS does it really well. Even with a 24men group, they rarely ball up. They fight with a certain distance between each other and they win against skilled groups. This behaviour will help them a ton when new siege changes get in place.

    I'm at work so this will be fairly concise.

    GoS balls up plenty. Believe me, I fight them enough, ask Rylana. Against groups like mine they have strats that involve spreading out, but they certainly recondense when they want to hit us hard, or against groups that don't have as much DPS as mine. Remember, spreading out is a survival tactic, not a winning one. Winning in a group of any size is the same: focused dps. In a small man it's sustaining till you burst down the enemy healer, in raids it's sustaining/scattering until you recondense to aoe bomb.

    As to how many times I'm outnumbered, I'd say plenty. On Monday and Sunday of this week alone with 24 people I found myself fighting against 2-5x my number. I might have won at Aleswell too if not for lag, at the end there was simply no abilities going off, but until then we repelled groups upwards of 3x our size from the keeps and surrounding resources. On a regular night I find myself outnumbered pretty much anytime I hit a defended keep. If the people within the keep grouped up and used strategy I'd have a really tough time of it.

    In the end that's why I'm really bothered by these changes. Bulb and I wanted to effect change on the Map, we wanted to wipe big groups, defend keeps, take territory. So we learned macro strategy, built our small group of players into a competitive raid and adapted to multiple patches and metas. And we are effective at all sizes. I logged on the other day to hear zone complaining about an AD ball group terrorizing glademist, all the usual about invincible spam monkeys. Went over and killed them with 8 people and a meatbag. What stopped the 30 other people there from doing exactly that? A lack of organization, know how or skill.

    That's why this looks ugly to me. Gameplay mechanics aren't holding people back, there is no secret formula for success. But you and others in this thread talk about changes that will allow you to take on and defeat a group like mine and quite frankly you don't deserve to. If you want to beat a good guild, earn it. Build your group, learn strategy, time some stealth bombs. To everyone complaining you can't stop these "ball groups", good. You didn't build to beat them, they built themselves to beat you, and they're going to keep doing it until you stop complaining and decide to counter them.

    Or the other option, which is to complain until ZoS changes the game so some randoms in a keep are competitive with a fully optimized and organized raid. And than what's the point at all?

    As to me running around a keep for no reason, I'm game to see footage. I can't remember ever doing this unless I'm expecting incoming and am trying to keep my raid mobile.

    In the end, siege should have w counter. Everything in the game has a counter. Snares, healing, debuffs. roots, damage, shields, siege damage, etc. It makes for a decent meta. High damage groups forgo shields to burn opponents, sustain groups adapt by swapping to ground based damage reduction and heavy CC, which can than be countered by negates and stationary siege, etc. Whatever siege mechanics are added simply must have counters, otherwise they become stupidly overpowered and give anyone with the numbers to run them a rediculous advantage.

    Hell, you think keep takes are hard now, wait until an organized raid is defending a keep inner with a full siege deployment. It's going to be stupid, and the only way to take it from them will be ....

    .....

    wait for it....

    ... to stack bigger numbers yourself. Back to square *** one.

    All this wall of text sounds pretty fluid and nice but in the end, there is only one solution that you suggest. You want people to "gid gud" at the game and to form their own organized 24men ballgroup to challenge yours.

    Are we living in the same Cyrodiil ? Don't you see that the game can't support such gameplay at the moment ? First of all, ping spikes to 200ms just the fact that there are 40players on the screen (not even spamming abilities). Around a keep, it's even worse! Now you're saying that the only way that we should be able to counter a skilled organized group would be to accomplish the exact same gameplay and spike the server all the way up to 1200ms where CCs can't be broken, weapon bars can't be swapped, where alot of abilities such as streak, wrecking blow, leap, etc won't even register, where abilities such as Leap and Meteor can kill people with extreme falling damage, where people get rubberbanded all over the place?

    No thank you. And don't get me that crap that this is not your problem if Zenimax aren't able to fix their game. WE have to aknowledge the fact that WE are going to deal with this for a while and WE have to take measures to counter it.

    This being said, WE need a zerg buster that has three major objectives :

    1) Spread ball groups
    2) Help defending keep breaches
    3) Give a chance to small/medium group at overwhelming larger groups

    I understand that AOE cap and Dynamic Ultimate Regeneration are also huge factors but they are not as important as sieges during keep battles. And as Brian Wheeler said multiple times and I fully support his opinion even though it won't make everybody happy, sieges should be an important factor in Cyrodiil and right now, it is not.

    So next time, maybe bring suggestions and tweaks regarding the changes brought in the main post instead of elaborating about how bad they are.

    I feel like your issue of having high ping with only 40 people on screen and no zerg balls is a computer or internet issue on your end. Myself and many others only ever see any jump in ping when two or more blobs attack each other. That is it. I can have 100 people at a keep and it would be fine if there are no zerg balls. Additionally, I wonder if the times you are speaking of, when you hit 200 ping plus with 40 people on screen and no spamming of aoe, is occuring at the same time that 2 blobs on the other side of the map are fighting each other. That may be the case. For instance, a few nights ago in azuras i was at the home gate and was getting 200-250 oing because two ball groups were fighting at BRK.
  • SirDopey
    SirDopey
    ✭✭✭✭✭
    I like the idea of siege effects not being purgable, I really don't see eye to eye with the people saying this helps the zerg mentality. Surely this goes against zergs?!? I mean the only time I ever get caught in siege AOE is when im A) Siegeing or B)in a LARGE close group. Given the amount of time you have to escape siege AoE I never (or at least very rarely) get caught in it when running in small groups, you just roll dodge out of it????
    NA PC | AD
    xx Doc Holliday xx
  • PhatGrimReaper
    PhatGrimReaper
    ✭✭✭✭✭
    .
    Satiar wrote: »
    frozywozy wrote: »
    Satiar wrote: »
    frozywozy wrote: »
    Satiar wrote: »
    @frozywozy

    Agreed, you know I have advocated for un-purgable siege for nearly a year now, and you were one of the first ones on here to see why it was necessary. It is necessary, Siege is useless in its current form.

    What many people don't understand is Siege has to be the zerg buster, thats its role, artillery is designed for. Its ridiclious these people can stand in concentrated siege fire and oil pots and not die. I saw a group of 20 get hit by 3 fire ballistas, a fire treb, and a cold harbor fire ballista all at nearly the same time right into the middle of their group and not a single person died, it didn't even make a scratch, thats just outright rubbish plain and simple.

    These people are not looking at the bigger picture, Siege has the following DISADVANTAGES:

    1. it can only be placed on perfectly flat surfaces
    2. around keeps and such the limit is 20
    3. while using the siege weapon your 5 abilities and ultimate can not be used without getting off the siege.
    4. While using the siege weapin you are a sitting duck with no defense, vulnerable to any one sneaking up and killing you.
    5. Siege weapons are slow to turn, have a slow fire rate, and their projectiles travel slowly to far away targets
    6 Have a slow reload rate
    7. Must be packed and unpacked
    8. Each one takes up an inventory slot
    9. Cost AP to buy
    10. Cost AP to repair
    11. Wear out pretty quick
    12. Can be destroyed

    There is 12 BIG disadvantages to using a siege weapon, its needs to have some benefits for all the drawbacks to using them. Right now the drawbacks far outweigh any advantage there is to using them.

    These coming changes will alleviate those drawbacks somewhat, and yes just charging through a breech or chokepoint like you can right now just ignoring siege fire will get you killed...it was probably meant to be this way from the beginning.....right now the only way to defend a keep is to drop off the walls with a larger zerg and just zerg them over, defense of any objective in this game right now is utterly pointless with how useless eige is currently and how OP Purge and Barrier are....

    These changes to siege will be the best changes ZOS has ever made to ESO and will actually not only allow defense of objectives being viable, but small scale 4v4 and 6v6 at resources with siege fire from both sides and seeing who cna outflank who will be common place.

    Yes playing with strategy and being forced to flank your opponents siege line instead of everyone just zerg stomping everything i think is a win-win.

    I think these changes will be great, and i look forward to them...i look forward to the day that actually have a "high ground" defensive advantage will actually be a tactical advantage for a change instead of the current just zerg stomp everything...just my 2 cents :)

    I want siege to help. I want a good group to set up defensive siege and use that advantage to beat me. I don't want them to set up siege, and than simply win because my group can't move, can't heal, can't sustain doesn't want to spread out . Point and click to win is horrible gameplay for an action based mmo.

    Here, fixed that for you. :smile:
    Oh right, I'll spread out while moving through a choke, why didnt I think of that?

    @Satiar - I understand that this thread has now 20pages+ of comments in a two days period. But I have read and aknowledged all of it. I've replied to several players telling me the same argument. The main reason why all the small group folks want to buff siege is to give us a chance to hold the ballgroup as long as possible to give a chance to reinforcements to arrive. In most scenarios, people try to siege a keep with low defense and this is totally right to do so.

    As I pointed out in different posts, when you siege a keep that is well defended already, you should not expect to capture it with only a medium group. You should need an army to get it. When the breach goes down and defenders properly deployed counter-sieges aiming at the breach, YOU SHOULD BE FORCED to pick between two options :

    1) You spread out into smaller groups and jump inside between each siege volley
    2) You get an additional wall down

    There is no "How am I supposed to spread out when going inside a choke point". If people are covering a choke point with sieges, you simply don't go into that choke point. Simple enough right? Siege > Ball group. I understand that the skill involved in using a siege is not at the same level as running an organized group. BUT the point to have sieges is to COUNTER organized groups trying to capture a keep without the necessity to have our own organized group.

    This solution could be temporary until Zenimax finds a way to improve the latency. Because right now, when two different 24men groups fight each other inside a keep, it is unplayable. Whoever have the more numbers win because it takes too much time to cc break, weapon swap and all kind of crap. I personally would like these siege changes to stay in place even if we don't have latency problems anymore. Because I don't think the only counter to a ballgroup should be a ballgroup. We need another zerg buster and since Prox det totally failed this purpose, siege will do it entirely.
    frozywozy wrote: »
    Satiar wrote: »
    Xsorus wrote: »
    Satiar wrote: »
    maxjapank wrote: »
    Satiar wrote: »
    @frozywozy

    Agreed, you know I have advocated for un-purgable siege for nearly a year now, and you were one of the first ones on here to see why it was necessary. It is necessary, Siege is useless in its current form.

    What many people don't understand is Siege has to be the zerg buster, thats its role, artillery is designed for. Its ridiclious these people can stand in concentrated siege fire and oil pots and not die. I saw a group of 20 get hit by 3 fire ballistas, a fire treb, and a cold harbor fire ballista all at nearly the same time right into the middle of their group and not a single person died, it didn't even make a scratch, thats just outright rubbish plain and simple.

    These people are not looking at the bigger picture, Siege has the following DISADVANTAGES:

    1. it can only be placed on perfectly flat surfaces
    2. around keeps and such the limit is 20
    3. while using the siege weapon your 5 abilities and ultimate can not be used without getting off the siege.
    4. While using the siege weapin you are a sitting duck with no defense, vulnerable to any one sneaking up and killing you.
    5. Siege weapons are slow to turn, have a slow fire rate, and their projectiles travel slowly to far away targets
    6 Have a slow reload rate
    7. Must be packed and unpacked
    8. Each one takes up an inventory slot
    9. Cost AP to buy
    10. Cost AP to repair
    11. Wear out pretty quick
    12. Can be destroyed

    There is 12 BIG disadvantages to using a siege weapon, its needs to have some benefits for all the drawbacks to using them. Right now the drawbacks far outweigh any advantage there is to using them.

    These coming changes will alleviate those drawbacks somewhat, and yes just charging through a breech or chokepoint like you can right now just ignoring siege fire will get you killed...it was probably meant to be this way from the beginning.....right now the only way to defend a keep is to drop off the walls with a larger zerg and just zerg them over, defense of any objective in this game right now is utterly pointless with how useless eige is currently and how OP Purge and Barrier are....

    These changes to siege will be the best changes ZOS has ever made to ESO and will actually not only allow defense of objectives being viable, but small scale 4v4 and 6v6 at resources with siege fire from both sides and seeing who cna outflank who will be common place.

    Yes playing with strategy and being forced to flank your opponents siege line instead of everyone just zerg stomping everything i think is a win-win.

    I think these changes will be great, and i look forward to them...i look forward to the day that actually have a "high ground" defensive advantage will actually be a tactical advantage for a change instead of the current just zerg stomp everything...just my 2 cents :)

    I want siege to help. I want a good group to set up defensive siege and use that advantage to beat me. I don't want them to set up siege, and than simply win because my group can't move, can't heal, can't sustain. Point and click to win is horrible gameplay for an action based mmo.

    But you can move, heal, sustain if you avoid siege. Right now, you don't need to do anything but stack and purge. Now I'm not completely on board with 6 seconds of unpurgable debuffs. Perhaps numbers can be adjusted. But overall, I see some good things with these changes.

    When pushing a choke in a keep, the whole point is it is a choke. if I can't move for shares, can't block or dodge for Stam reduction, can't heal for magica reduction and heal rebuffs, cannot purge these debuffs, what am I supposed to do? It's suicide and everyone knows it.

    There's only a few spots siege can fire at from in a keep..A lot of it can't hit the same spot or spots near the choke point..You'll have to time when ya go in...and maybe not rush all in at once (As in half go in to draw fire then the other half rush in right afterwards when they're moving their weapon to hit the people who just ran in)

    Going through a choke point thats well defended will be dangerous....compared to now where you just ignore it.

    It is still extremely dangerous as is. Pushing into keeps you can put one siege on flag, one on opposite postern, one breach mid stairs, one top breach stairs, and two and the U that can all be set to bombard the breach. As is if defenders know what they are doing a group is usually annihilated on the breach or shortly after.

    But most defenders would rather whine about ball groups and clamor for increased siege damage than watch what groups like Haxus do with un-buffed siege and a few ultis beneath oils.

    Are you seriously claiming that sieges inside keeps are dangerous as it is right now? You must be kidding me. You are one of the few groups who don't even bother going straight on flags when you get inside an inner. Often I see your group running up the stairs to the back flag to the inner breach, and up the stairs again doing your lil maneuvers for 5minutes straight, killing people NOT because it is necessary and because you risk wiping BUT for the show and for the extra APs, even if you will never admit it.

    Siege does absolutely nothing and bring no threat whatsoever to your 4-5 barriers rotation, purge and regen maneuver spammers 24men group. Don't even try.. ;)

    Wait what?

    How I take a keep depends entirely on who is inside it. There are several ways to play a keep take. You can push through to flags and force an enemy to engage you there, you can go up far or near side stairs and attempt to control the top, you can paintrain around to beat down resistance before taking flags. I'll never deny trying to get my guys some AP and kills, but serious keep takes with serious resistance are entirely different.

    Siege on its own isn't going to kill me, obviously. I have 24 people specced to heal, purge and maintain the raid. if any random person could put siege on me and ruin me, that'd be silly. What ruins me in keep takes is a well-coordinated group using their defensive choke to force me into a bad situation. Honestly, the main guild that does this now is Haxus. Most other groups try to bomb me on back flag, or on front flag, or at the top of the stairs-- meh. I'd say 90% of my keep wipes come from getting ult-dumped in the breach. All it takes is one good burst of DPS and CC there, and suddenly everything catches up: the oils, the meatbags, the fire trebs/ballista. And than we die, and it's tragic.

    @Satiar - Like I've said in my post, it is easy to see the difference between a large group going upstair to clear the oils, going on the flags to flip the keep, etc. Alot of times, when I see you guys taking Chalman, this is NOT what you do. You spend 5 minutes running arround the inner keep to farm people for the show, not because they apply any threat whatsoever to you. Siege is a joke as it is. I fire your guys with meatbags, fire balistas and what are the results? As soon as my siege reach your guys, there is another barrier popping up.
    Can most people do it to us? Yes, but they don't. You have no idea how many times I've been defending a keep or outpost on DC and seen everyone huddled upstairs and pounding the breach with siege as if that's supposed to do something. Siege is a tool, a force amplifier, something you use to make your group's defensive position stronger. Buffing it to godly levels because you can't be bothered to learn how to use your other tools (your group) in addition to using point and click siege is just silly.

    This thread is not a patch note. This thread is an open discussion opened by Brian Wheeler months in advance to hear our feedbacks and suggestions. Like most people, including me pointed out, the siege buffs are overkilled. I have given several suggestions to tweak it down but in the end, the UTILITY of the sieges HAVE to change. It is not only a matter of damage.

    My suggestions, again, in case you missed it :

    1) Meatbag and oil catapult debuffs/snares SHOULD be purgable, but not with any morph of Purge. Purge should be used only to remove player debuffs/snares. Cleansing Ritual should remove every negative effect. It would require individual player interaction using the synergy himself.

    2) Oil catapult / Lightning balista should deal only 2k damage (for testing purposes - adjust if needed afterward)

    3) Retreating Maneuvers should NOT remove or give immunity to siege snares (only player snares). Charging Maneuvers should remove siege snares but NOT give immunity.
    Satiar wrote: »
    Xsorus wrote: »
    Satiar wrote: »
    Xsorus wrote: »
    Satiar wrote: »
    maxjapank wrote: »
    Satiar wrote: »
    @frozywozy

    Agreed, you know I have advocated for un-purgable siege for nearly a year now, and you were one of the first ones on here to see why it was necessary. It is necessary, Siege is useless in its current form.

    What many people don't understand is Siege has to be the zerg buster, thats its role, artillery is designed for. Its ridiclious these people can stand in concentrated siege fire and oil pots and not die. I saw a group of 20 get hit by 3 fire ballistas, a fire treb, and a cold harbor fire ballista all at nearly the same time right into the middle of their group and not a single person died, it didn't even make a scratch, thats just outright rubbish plain and simple.

    These people are not looking at the bigger picture, Siege has the following DISADVANTAGES:

    1. it can only be placed on perfectly flat surfaces
    2. around keeps and such the limit is 20
    3. while using the siege weapon your 5 abilities and ultimate can not be used without getting off the siege.
    4. While using the siege weapin you are a sitting duck with no defense, vulnerable to any one sneaking up and killing you.
    5. Siege weapons are slow to turn, have a slow fire rate, and their projectiles travel slowly to far away targets
    6 Have a slow reload rate
    7. Must be packed and unpacked
    8. Each one takes up an inventory slot
    9. Cost AP to buy
    10. Cost AP to repair
    11. Wear out pretty quick
    12. Can be destroyed

    There is 12 BIG disadvantages to using a siege weapon, its needs to have some benefits for all the drawbacks to using them. Right now the drawbacks far outweigh any advantage there is to using them.

    These coming changes will alleviate those drawbacks somewhat, and yes just charging through a breech or chokepoint like you can right now just ignoring siege fire will get you killed...it was probably meant to be this way from the beginning.....right now the only way to defend a keep is to drop off the walls with a larger zerg and just zerg them over, defense of any objective in this game right now is utterly pointless with how useless eige is currently and how OP Purge and Barrier are....

    These changes to siege will be the best changes ZOS has ever made to ESO and will actually not only allow defense of objectives being viable, but small scale 4v4 and 6v6 at resources with siege fire from both sides and seeing who cna outflank who will be common place.

    Yes playing with strategy and being forced to flank your opponents siege line instead of everyone just zerg stomping everything i think is a win-win.

    I think these changes will be great, and i look forward to them...i look forward to the day that actually have a "high ground" defensive advantage will actually be a tactical advantage for a change instead of the current just zerg stomp everything...just my 2 cents :)

    I want siege to help. I want a good group to set up defensive siege and use that advantage to beat me. I don't want them to set up siege, and than simply win because my group can't move, can't heal, can't sustain. Point and click to win is horrible gameplay for an action based mmo.

    But you can move, heal, sustain if you avoid siege. Right now, you don't need to do anything but stack and purge. Now I'm not completely on board with 6 seconds of unpurgable debuffs. Perhaps numbers can be adjusted. But overall, I see some good things with these changes.

    When pushing a choke in a keep, the whole point is it is a choke. if I can't move for shares, can't block or dodge for Stam reduction, can't heal for magica reduction and heal rebuffs, cannot purge these debuffs, what am I supposed to do? It's suicide and everyone knows it.

    There's only a few spots siege can fire at from in a keep..A lot of it can't hit the same spot or spots near the choke point..You'll have to time when ya go in...and maybe not rush all in at once (As in half go in to draw fire then the other half rush in right afterwards when they're moving their weapon to hit the people who just ran in)

    Going through a choke point thats well defended will be dangerous....compared to now where you just ignore it.

    It is still extremely dangerous as is. Pushing into keeps you can put one siege on flag, one on opposite postern, one breach mid stairs, one top breach stairs, and two and the U that can all be set to bombard the breach. As is if defenders know what they are doing a group is usually annihilated on the breach or shortly after.

    But most defenders would rather whine about ball groups and clamor for increased siege damage than watch what groups like Haxus do with un-buffed siege and a few ultis beneath oils.

    Are you seriously trying to claim a breech is extremely dangerous right now for a Ball Group?

    /facepalm

    Against anyone who knows what they are doing, yes. Turns out when you work together as a team and employ basic tactics a heavily defensible position can be ... wait for it... easily defended.

    You have a choke you can clog with siege and dump ultis on that your enemy MUST pass through. It's a defenders wet dream. That you don't recognize this is why I mostly don't trust your opinion in group play, as you clearly dont get even basic things like this.

    Having personally defended keeps with my "Zerg" of 8-12 people precisely because of siege and convenient chokes, I just don't get what the hell you've going on about

    The fact that your medium group successfuly defended a keep against larger numbers doesn't prouve anything. You simply faced disorganized pugs / groups / guilds. You didn't faced Vehemence. :smile:


    I mean, sure. I think you sometimes forget Vehemence wasn't always this way. We didn't clamor for siege buffs and nerfs to group skills, etc., to beat the guilds and groups that were beating us: we learned from the groups that were winning, and learned to win ourselves. Bombing the breach with siege as backup has been extremely effective for us as a group, and it's something I remember learning from Crystalize. He used to go down on the mid-stairs, meatbag across the way and at the top, oils on the lip, and just pour DPS on people coming in the breach. It doesn't take a lot to break the purge/barrier spam of a group if you do it right, I've seen good raids melted when a well-timed leap or meteor broke up their cycle and they never recovered from the debuffs/oil/fire and subsequent damage.

    I'm all kinds of fine with siege getting a buff. Eh, whatever. I can manage that. Sure, why not. But the buff amounts we're talking here are insane. The response to "spread out" is also kinda hilarious. Sure, I'll spread out my 20 people when running into a group of 40-50, that's gonna work out just fine. Surely, we won't be separated and dragged down by superior numbers except OF COURSE we will because that's the whole idea of an elite raid in this game: a collection of players that play together in such a way that their effectiveness is greater than the sum of all parts. Once you remove a group's ability to play as a team than you're not going to win outnumbered anymore.

    It's funny that you talk about spreading out your numbers (24+ group) against a group larger than yours. Seriously, how many times a night do you face larger numbers against your group? If you face larger numbers, you SHOULD have a major disadvantage. Especially when fighting openfield. It is the same for small/medium group fighting your large group, we have a disadvantage facing you openfield. During keep battles, sieges should have a major impact into the war as it was intended before this game got released.

    You fight in an area and people start deploying too many sieges against you? Spread out, move to a different location, use LoS or die. Simple enough.

    GoS does it really well. Even with a 24men group, they rarely ball up. They fight with a certain distance between each other and they win against skilled groups. This behaviour will help them a ton when new siege changes get in place.

    I'm at work so this will be fairly concise.

    GoS balls up plenty. Believe me, I fight them enough, ask Rylana. Against groups like mine they have strats that involve spreading out, but they certainly recondense when they want to hit us hard, or against groups that don't have as much DPS as mine. Remember, spreading out is a survival tactic, not a winning one. Winning in a group of any size is the same: focused dps. In a small man it's sustaining till you burst down the enemy healer, in raids it's sustaining/scattering until you recondense to aoe bomb.

    As to how many times I'm outnumbered, I'd say plenty. On Monday and Sunday of this week alone with 24 people I found myself fighting against 2-5x my number. I might have won at Aleswell too if not for lag, at the end there was simply no abilities going off, but until then we repelled groups upwards of 3x our size from the keeps and surrounding resources. On a regular night I find myself outnumbered pretty much anytime I hit a defended keep. If the people within the keep grouped up and used strategy I'd have a really tough time of it.

    In the end that's why I'm really bothered by these changes. Bulb and I wanted to effect change on the Map, we wanted to wipe big groups, defend keeps, take territory. So we learned macro strategy, built our small group of players into a competitive raid and adapted to multiple patches and metas. And we are effective at all sizes. I logged on the other day to hear zone complaining about an AD ball group terrorizing glademist, all the usual about invincible spam monkeys. Went over and killed them with 8 people and a meatbag. What stopped the 30 other people there from doing exactly that? A lack of organization, know how or skill.

    That's why this looks ugly to me. Gameplay mechanics aren't holding people back, there is no secret formula for success. But you and others in this thread talk about changes that will allow you to take on and defeat a group like mine and quite frankly you don't deserve to. If you want to beat a good guild, earn it. Build your group, learn strategy, time some stealth bombs. To everyone complaining you can't stop these "ball groups", good. You didn't build to beat them, they built themselves to beat you, and they're going to keep doing it until you stop complaining and decide to counter them.

    Or the other option, which is to complain until ZoS changes the game so some randoms in a keep are competitive with a fully optimized and organized raid. And than what's the point at all?

    As to me running around a keep for no reason, I'm game to see footage. I can't remember ever doing this unless I'm expecting incoming and am trying to keep my raid mobile.

    In the end, siege should have w counter. Everything in the game has a counter. Snares, healing, debuffs. roots, damage, shields, siege damage, etc. It makes for a decent meta. High damage groups forgo shields to burn opponents, sustain groups adapt by swapping to ground based damage reduction and heavy CC, which can than be countered by negates and stationary siege, etc. Whatever siege mechanics are added simply must have counters, otherwise they become stupidly overpowered and give anyone with the numbers to run them a rediculous advantage.

    Hell, you think keep takes are hard now, wait until an organized raid is defending a keep inner with a full siege deployment. It's going to be stupid, and the only way to take it from them will be ....

    .....

    wait for it....

    ... to stack bigger numbers yourself. Back to square *** one.

    So much this....

    It's a game of war... all types are required for a faction(Army) to be effective... large groups(main force), small elite groups(special forces), scouts/snipers(solo/crazy good 1vX types), if the sniper runs across the enemy's main force, it's pretty fair that he dies..... he was at fault, he got caught in an unfavorable position and got rolled by a superior force.

    However, there needs to be some kind of downside to stacking more than a 24 man.... that's just crazy.

    Also, skill factor.... If 12 highly skilled & experienced players in TS fight a similar number of randoms, that lack organisation, it's right that the organised group has the advantage.

    This isn't preschool, we don't need medals of participation. You want to clear SO, you get geared, you practice, you crack it. You want to compete for vMA leaderboards, you gear, you practice, you crack it..... why should PVP be any different?
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  • WRX
    WRX
    ✭✭✭✭✭
    This change is counter productive. It favors zerg surfers and mindlessly placing down siege and shooting it.

    Its crazy to think that we are going to repeat the same mistakes that @ZOS_BrianWheeler and the PvP team fixed in the past. Remember when you couldnt counter oil cata's at all? Same basic idea with meat bags and WoE. We have already inadvertently gone down this path before in a very similar fashion.

    The idea of siege draining resources is 100% ok with me, and cyrodiil does need an increase in damage. But making healings/snares unable to be purged is a very poor idea.

    There are 2 possible ways I see this working:

    1) Let our normal purge remove player effects and snares, and then reworking the guard skill into something similar to purge in order to counter the siege skills, and counter them effectively.

    2) Purge only removes the effect from you and 3 allies in your group, however we would need to add a stamina version of purge. My recommendation, remove cleanse. I love cleanse, and its kept me alive many times. But it does favor large groups and when only purging 4 allies, wont be used that often.

    What we really, really need is slight siege buffs that is still able to be countered, and removal of AoE caps.

    I could discuss this forever, but have in the past wrote several pages regarding Cyrodiil and my honest opinion of how to balance it. Then gave it to Rich, Eric, and Gina during our meetings with them. Some things happened, most didn't. Regardless, I am sure most of what I have to say has already been said in the previous 700 posts, lets just hope our opinion for fair game play is heard.
    Edited by WRX on December 3, 2015 3:38AM
    Decibel GM

    GLUB GLUB
  • frozywozy
    frozywozy
    ✭✭✭✭✭
    ✭✭
    Satiar wrote: »
    GoS balls up plenty. Believe me, I fight them enough, ask Rylana. Against groups like mine they have strats that involve spreading out, but they certainly recondense when they want to hit us hard, or against groups that don't have as much DPS as mine. Remember, spreading out is a survival tactic, not a winning one. Winning in a group of any size is the same: focused dps. In a small man it's sustaining till you burst down the enemy healer, in raids it's sustaining/scattering until you recondense to aoe bomb.

    I've never said that they never ball up. I've said that they know when it's time to spread out from a group and to reform back on crown after an ulti dump. They also can fight and destroy people while staying spread out as demonstrated on this video as they fight another organized AD guild :

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OltsY1NbPJg
    As to how many times I'm outnumbered, I'd say plenty. On Monday and Sunday of this week alone with 24 people I found myself fighting against 2-5x my number. I might have won at Aleswell too if not for lag, at the end there was simply no abilities going off, but until then we repelled groups upwards of 3x our size from the keeps and surrounding resources. On a regular night I find myself outnumbered pretty much anytime I hit a defended keep. If the people within the keep grouped up and used strategy I'd have a really tough time of it.

    From what I've seen on the night of tuesday, you were running a medium group of 12 between bleakers and chalman mine and you were constantly rushing ones and twos (me included) and you farmed lower numbers on the chalman mine for a while. Not saying that you do it all the time but still you don't hesitate when you get a chance to get some easy AP.
    In the end that's why I'm really bothered by these changes. Bulb and I wanted to effect change on the Map, we wanted to wipe big groups, defend keeps, take territory. So we learned macro strategy, built our small group of players into a competitive raid and adapted to multiple patches and metas. And we are effective at all sizes. I logged on the other day to hear zone complaining about an AD ball group terrorizing glademist, all the usual about invincible spam monkeys. Went over and killed them with 8 people and a meatbag. What stopped the 30 other people there from doing exactly that? A lack of organization, know how or skill.

    I would love to see your 8man with a meatbag wipe Vehemence 24men group doing the same.
    That's why this looks ugly to me. Gameplay mechanics aren't holding people back, there is no secret formula for success. But you and others in this thread talk about changes that will allow you to take on and defeat a group like mine and quite frankly you don't deserve to. If you want to beat a good guild, earn it. Build your group, learn strategy, time some stealth bombs. To everyone complaining you can't stop these "ball groups", good. You didn't build to beat them, they built themselves to beat you, and they're going to keep doing it until you stop complaining and decide to counter them.

    As i've said in my previous thread quoting you, your one and only solution is to suggest to pugs or guilds who don't use teamspeak to get to "your level" and use "ulti dumbs" and "stack on the crown" blob tactics to win the fight.

    Problem is, as alot of solo / small / medium groups have pointed out in this thread is that not everybody like to run in a 24men group. It does not mean that since they don't want to, they should fear your group and that they should say "Oh Vehemence is coming to Chalman guys, lets go away we dont stand any chance".

    No. We need a zerg buster which is going to force a large group to spread out. This isn't an easy button win. This is is a "spread out or die" button. This initiative is going to encourage people to use single target abilities in the meantime until your blob restack together and do your spamming thing that you like so much. Server performances are going to get better in the meantime aswell.

    Also, unlike most people here who are in favor of the siege changes, I understand when you say that it takes skills and organisation to lead and run in a large group. I have been doing it for a year with my own guild in the beginning, then with IR, Nexus, and I still do it with GoS from time to time. BUT the small scale people have it alot harder than you to try to find a way to destroy your group. The reason why a zerg buster IS needed. Again, this is not intended to be easy, and trust me you will adjust in no time to the "spread and reform" move. Moon Die was the first one as far as I'm concerned to use this strategy and Crystalized has done it a ton of time when I used to run with him aswell.
    Hell, you think keep takes are hard now, wait until an organized raid is defending a keep inner with a full siege deployment. It's going to be stupid, and the only way to take it from them will be ....

    .....

    wait for it....

    ... to stack bigger numbers yourself. Back to square *** one.

    Again, if you attack a keep well defended, you should require an army to take it. I'm really looking forward for the reintroduction of the forward camps because it is going to encourage people to hit deeper in enemy territory and this is what organized groups should do. I don't know why people expect to capture a keep without too much troubles if there is alot of sieges already deployed with an organized group.. you should have near to 0 chances.

    Advices :

    1) Bring more than one wall down
    2) Send vampire nightblades with cloak inside to assassinate people using sieges on the breach
    3) Separate your large group into smaller ones and go in between each siege volleys

    bowmanz607 wrote: »
    frozywozy wrote: »
    Satiar wrote: »
    frozywozy wrote: »
    Satiar wrote: »
    frozywozy wrote: »
    Satiar wrote: »
    @frozywozy

    Agreed, you know I have advocated for un-purgable siege for nearly a year now, and you were one of the first ones on here to see why it was necessary. It is necessary, Siege is useless in its current form.

    What many people don't understand is Siege has to be the zerg buster, thats its role, artillery is designed for. Its ridiclious these people can stand in concentrated siege fire and oil pots and not die. I saw a group of 20 get hit by 3 fire ballistas, a fire treb, and a cold harbor fire ballista all at nearly the same time right into the middle of their group and not a single person died, it didn't even make a scratch, thats just outright rubbish plain and simple.

    These people are not looking at the bigger picture, Siege has the following DISADVANTAGES:

    1. it can only be placed on perfectly flat surfaces
    2. around keeps and such the limit is 20
    3. while using the siege weapon your 5 abilities and ultimate can not be used without getting off the siege.
    4. While using the siege weapin you are a sitting duck with no defense, vulnerable to any one sneaking up and killing you.
    5. Siege weapons are slow to turn, have a slow fire rate, and their projectiles travel slowly to far away targets
    6 Have a slow reload rate
    7. Must be packed and unpacked
    8. Each one takes up an inventory slot
    9. Cost AP to buy
    10. Cost AP to repair
    11. Wear out pretty quick
    12. Can be destroyed

    There is 12 BIG disadvantages to using a siege weapon, its needs to have some benefits for all the drawbacks to using them. Right now the drawbacks far outweigh any advantage there is to using them.

    These coming changes will alleviate those drawbacks somewhat, and yes just charging through a breech or chokepoint like you can right now just ignoring siege fire will get you killed...it was probably meant to be this way from the beginning.....right now the only way to defend a keep is to drop off the walls with a larger zerg and just zerg them over, defense of any objective in this game right now is utterly pointless with how useless eige is currently and how OP Purge and Barrier are....

    These changes to siege will be the best changes ZOS has ever made to ESO and will actually not only allow defense of objectives being viable, but small scale 4v4 and 6v6 at resources with siege fire from both sides and seeing who cna outflank who will be common place.

    Yes playing with strategy and being forced to flank your opponents siege line instead of everyone just zerg stomping everything i think is a win-win.

    I think these changes will be great, and i look forward to them...i look forward to the day that actually have a "high ground" defensive advantage will actually be a tactical advantage for a change instead of the current just zerg stomp everything...just my 2 cents :)

    I want siege to help. I want a good group to set up defensive siege and use that advantage to beat me. I don't want them to set up siege, and than simply win because my group can't move, can't heal, can't sustain doesn't want to spread out . Point and click to win is horrible gameplay for an action based mmo.

    Here, fixed that for you. :smile:
    Oh right, I'll spread out while moving through a choke, why didnt I think of that?

    @Satiar - I understand that this thread has now 20pages+ of comments in a two days period. But I have read and aknowledged all of it. I've replied to several players telling me the same argument. The main reason why all the small group folks want to buff siege is to give us a chance to hold the ballgroup as long as possible to give a chance to reinforcements to arrive. In most scenarios, people try to siege a keep with low defense and this is totally right to do so.

    As I pointed out in different posts, when you siege a keep that is well defended already, you should not expect to capture it with only a medium group. You should need an army to get it. When the breach goes down and defenders properly deployed counter-sieges aiming at the breach, YOU SHOULD BE FORCED to pick between two options :

    1) You spread out into smaller groups and jump inside between each siege volley
    2) You get an additional wall down

    There is no "How am I supposed to spread out when going inside a choke point". If people are covering a choke point with sieges, you simply don't go into that choke point. Simple enough right? Siege > Ball group. I understand that the skill involved in using a siege is not at the same level as running an organized group. BUT the point to have sieges is to COUNTER organized groups trying to capture a keep without the necessity to have our own organized group.

    This solution could be temporary until Zenimax finds a way to improve the latency. Because right now, when two different 24men groups fight each other inside a keep, it is unplayable. Whoever have the more numbers win because it takes too much time to cc break, weapon swap and all kind of crap. I personally would like these siege changes to stay in place even if we don't have latency problems anymore. Because I don't think the only counter to a ballgroup should be a ballgroup. We need another zerg buster and since Prox det totally failed this purpose, siege will do it entirely.
    frozywozy wrote: »
    Satiar wrote: »
    Xsorus wrote: »
    Satiar wrote: »
    maxjapank wrote: »
    Satiar wrote: »
    @frozywozy

    Agreed, you know I have advocated for un-purgable siege for nearly a year now, and you were one of the first ones on here to see why it was necessary. It is necessary, Siege is useless in its current form.

    What many people don't understand is Siege has to be the zerg buster, thats its role, artillery is designed for. Its ridiclious these people can stand in concentrated siege fire and oil pots and not die. I saw a group of 20 get hit by 3 fire ballistas, a fire treb, and a cold harbor fire ballista all at nearly the same time right into the middle of their group and not a single person died, it didn't even make a scratch, thats just outright rubbish plain and simple.

    These people are not looking at the bigger picture, Siege has the following DISADVANTAGES:

    1. it can only be placed on perfectly flat surfaces
    2. around keeps and such the limit is 20
    3. while using the siege weapon your 5 abilities and ultimate can not be used without getting off the siege.
    4. While using the siege weapin you are a sitting duck with no defense, vulnerable to any one sneaking up and killing you.
    5. Siege weapons are slow to turn, have a slow fire rate, and their projectiles travel slowly to far away targets
    6 Have a slow reload rate
    7. Must be packed and unpacked
    8. Each one takes up an inventory slot
    9. Cost AP to buy
    10. Cost AP to repair
    11. Wear out pretty quick
    12. Can be destroyed

    There is 12 BIG disadvantages to using a siege weapon, its needs to have some benefits for all the drawbacks to using them. Right now the drawbacks far outweigh any advantage there is to using them.

    These coming changes will alleviate those drawbacks somewhat, and yes just charging through a breech or chokepoint like you can right now just ignoring siege fire will get you killed...it was probably meant to be this way from the beginning.....right now the only way to defend a keep is to drop off the walls with a larger zerg and just zerg them over, defense of any objective in this game right now is utterly pointless with how useless eige is currently and how OP Purge and Barrier are....

    These changes to siege will be the best changes ZOS has ever made to ESO and will actually not only allow defense of objectives being viable, but small scale 4v4 and 6v6 at resources with siege fire from both sides and seeing who cna outflank who will be common place.

    Yes playing with strategy and being forced to flank your opponents siege line instead of everyone just zerg stomping everything i think is a win-win.

    I think these changes will be great, and i look forward to them...i look forward to the day that actually have a "high ground" defensive advantage will actually be a tactical advantage for a change instead of the current just zerg stomp everything...just my 2 cents :)

    I want siege to help. I want a good group to set up defensive siege and use that advantage to beat me. I don't want them to set up siege, and than simply win because my group can't move, can't heal, can't sustain. Point and click to win is horrible gameplay for an action based mmo.

    But you can move, heal, sustain if you avoid siege. Right now, you don't need to do anything but stack and purge. Now I'm not completely on board with 6 seconds of unpurgable debuffs. Perhaps numbers can be adjusted. But overall, I see some good things with these changes.

    When pushing a choke in a keep, the whole point is it is a choke. if I can't move for shares, can't block or dodge for Stam reduction, can't heal for magica reduction and heal rebuffs, cannot purge these debuffs, what am I supposed to do? It's suicide and everyone knows it.

    There's only a few spots siege can fire at from in a keep..A lot of it can't hit the same spot or spots near the choke point..You'll have to time when ya go in...and maybe not rush all in at once (As in half go in to draw fire then the other half rush in right afterwards when they're moving their weapon to hit the people who just ran in)

    Going through a choke point thats well defended will be dangerous....compared to now where you just ignore it.

    It is still extremely dangerous as is. Pushing into keeps you can put one siege on flag, one on opposite postern, one breach mid stairs, one top breach stairs, and two and the U that can all be set to bombard the breach. As is if defenders know what they are doing a group is usually annihilated on the breach or shortly after.

    But most defenders would rather whine about ball groups and clamor for increased siege damage than watch what groups like Haxus do with un-buffed siege and a few ultis beneath oils.

    Are you seriously claiming that sieges inside keeps are dangerous as it is right now? You must be kidding me. You are one of the few groups who don't even bother going straight on flags when you get inside an inner. Often I see your group running up the stairs to the back flag to the inner breach, and up the stairs again doing your lil maneuvers for 5minutes straight, killing people NOT because it is necessary and because you risk wiping BUT for the show and for the extra APs, even if you will never admit it.

    Siege does absolutely nothing and bring no threat whatsoever to your 4-5 barriers rotation, purge and regen maneuver spammers 24men group. Don't even try.. ;)

    Wait what?

    How I take a keep depends entirely on who is inside it. There are several ways to play a keep take. You can push through to flags and force an enemy to engage you there, you can go up far or near side stairs and attempt to control the top, you can paintrain around to beat down resistance before taking flags. I'll never deny trying to get my guys some AP and kills, but serious keep takes with serious resistance are entirely different.

    Siege on its own isn't going to kill me, obviously. I have 24 people specced to heal, purge and maintain the raid. if any random person could put siege on me and ruin me, that'd be silly. What ruins me in keep takes is a well-coordinated group using their defensive choke to force me into a bad situation. Honestly, the main guild that does this now is Haxus. Most other groups try to bomb me on back flag, or on front flag, or at the top of the stairs-- meh. I'd say 90% of my keep wipes come from getting ult-dumped in the breach. All it takes is one good burst of DPS and CC there, and suddenly everything catches up: the oils, the meatbags, the fire trebs/ballista. And than we die, and it's tragic.

    @Satiar - Like I've said in my post, it is easy to see the difference between a large group going upstair to clear the oils, going on the flags to flip the keep, etc. Alot of times, when I see you guys taking Chalman, this is NOT what you do. You spend 5 minutes running arround the inner keep to farm people for the show, not because they apply any threat whatsoever to you. Siege is a joke as it is. I fire your guys with meatbags, fire balistas and what are the results? As soon as my siege reach your guys, there is another barrier popping up.
    Can most people do it to us? Yes, but they don't. You have no idea how many times I've been defending a keep or outpost on DC and seen everyone huddled upstairs and pounding the breach with siege as if that's supposed to do something. Siege is a tool, a force amplifier, something you use to make your group's defensive position stronger. Buffing it to godly levels because you can't be bothered to learn how to use your other tools (your group) in addition to using point and click siege is just silly.

    This thread is not a patch note. This thread is an open discussion opened by Brian Wheeler months in advance to hear our feedbacks and suggestions. Like most people, including me pointed out, the siege buffs are overkilled. I have given several suggestions to tweak it down but in the end, the UTILITY of the sieges HAVE to change. It is not only a matter of damage.

    My suggestions, again, in case you missed it :

    1) Meatbag and oil catapult debuffs/snares SHOULD be purgable, but not with any morph of Purge. Purge should be used only to remove player debuffs/snares. Cleansing Ritual should remove every negative effect. It would require individual player interaction using the synergy himself.

    2) Oil catapult / Lightning balista should deal only 2k damage (for testing purposes - adjust if needed afterward)

    3) Retreating Maneuvers should NOT remove or give immunity to siege snares (only player snares). Charging Maneuvers should remove siege snares but NOT give immunity.
    Satiar wrote: »
    Xsorus wrote: »
    Satiar wrote: »
    Xsorus wrote: »
    Satiar wrote: »
    maxjapank wrote: »
    Satiar wrote: »
    @frozywozy

    Agreed, you know I have advocated for un-purgable siege for nearly a year now, and you were one of the first ones on here to see why it was necessary. It is necessary, Siege is useless in its current form.

    What many people don't understand is Siege has to be the zerg buster, thats its role, artillery is designed for. Its ridiclious these people can stand in concentrated siege fire and oil pots and not die. I saw a group of 20 get hit by 3 fire ballistas, a fire treb, and a cold harbor fire ballista all at nearly the same time right into the middle of their group and not a single person died, it didn't even make a scratch, thats just outright rubbish plain and simple.

    These people are not looking at the bigger picture, Siege has the following DISADVANTAGES:

    1. it can only be placed on perfectly flat surfaces
    2. around keeps and such the limit is 20
    3. while using the siege weapon your 5 abilities and ultimate can not be used without getting off the siege.
    4. While using the siege weapin you are a sitting duck with no defense, vulnerable to any one sneaking up and killing you.
    5. Siege weapons are slow to turn, have a slow fire rate, and their projectiles travel slowly to far away targets
    6 Have a slow reload rate
    7. Must be packed and unpacked
    8. Each one takes up an inventory slot
    9. Cost AP to buy
    10. Cost AP to repair
    11. Wear out pretty quick
    12. Can be destroyed

    There is 12 BIG disadvantages to using a siege weapon, its needs to have some benefits for all the drawbacks to using them. Right now the drawbacks far outweigh any advantage there is to using them.

    These coming changes will alleviate those drawbacks somewhat, and yes just charging through a breech or chokepoint like you can right now just ignoring siege fire will get you killed...it was probably meant to be this way from the beginning.....right now the only way to defend a keep is to drop off the walls with a larger zerg and just zerg them over, defense of any objective in this game right now is utterly pointless with how useless eige is currently and how OP Purge and Barrier are....

    These changes to siege will be the best changes ZOS has ever made to ESO and will actually not only allow defense of objectives being viable, but small scale 4v4 and 6v6 at resources with siege fire from both sides and seeing who cna outflank who will be common place.

    Yes playing with strategy and being forced to flank your opponents siege line instead of everyone just zerg stomping everything i think is a win-win.

    I think these changes will be great, and i look forward to them...i look forward to the day that actually have a "high ground" defensive advantage will actually be a tactical advantage for a change instead of the current just zerg stomp everything...just my 2 cents :)

    I want siege to help. I want a good group to set up defensive siege and use that advantage to beat me. I don't want them to set up siege, and than simply win because my group can't move, can't heal, can't sustain. Point and click to win is horrible gameplay for an action based mmo.

    But you can move, heal, sustain if you avoid siege. Right now, you don't need to do anything but stack and purge. Now I'm not completely on board with 6 seconds of unpurgable debuffs. Perhaps numbers can be adjusted. But overall, I see some good things with these changes.

    When pushing a choke in a keep, the whole point is it is a choke. if I can't move for shares, can't block or dodge for Stam reduction, can't heal for magica reduction and heal rebuffs, cannot purge these debuffs, what am I supposed to do? It's suicide and everyone knows it.

    There's only a few spots siege can fire at from in a keep..A lot of it can't hit the same spot or spots near the choke point..You'll have to time when ya go in...and maybe not rush all in at once (As in half go in to draw fire then the other half rush in right afterwards when they're moving their weapon to hit the people who just ran in)

    Going through a choke point thats well defended will be dangerous....compared to now where you just ignore it.

    It is still extremely dangerous as is. Pushing into keeps you can put one siege on flag, one on opposite postern, one breach mid stairs, one top breach stairs, and two and the U that can all be set to bombard the breach. As is if defenders know what they are doing a group is usually annihilated on the breach or shortly after.

    But most defenders would rather whine about ball groups and clamor for increased siege damage than watch what groups like Haxus do with un-buffed siege and a few ultis beneath oils.

    Are you seriously trying to claim a breech is extremely dangerous right now for a Ball Group?

    /facepalm

    Against anyone who knows what they are doing, yes. Turns out when you work together as a team and employ basic tactics a heavily defensible position can be ... wait for it... easily defended.

    You have a choke you can clog with siege and dump ultis on that your enemy MUST pass through. It's a defenders wet dream. That you don't recognize this is why I mostly don't trust your opinion in group play, as you clearly dont get even basic things like this.

    Having personally defended keeps with my "Zerg" of 8-12 people precisely because of siege and convenient chokes, I just don't get what the hell you've going on about

    The fact that your medium group successfuly defended a keep against larger numbers doesn't prouve anything. You simply faced disorganized pugs / groups / guilds. You didn't faced Vehemence. :smile:


    I mean, sure. I think you sometimes forget Vehemence wasn't always this way. We didn't clamor for siege buffs and nerfs to group skills, etc., to beat the guilds and groups that were beating us: we learned from the groups that were winning, and learned to win ourselves. Bombing the breach with siege as backup has been extremely effective for us as a group, and it's something I remember learning from Crystalize. He used to go down on the mid-stairs, meatbag across the way and at the top, oils on the lip, and just pour DPS on people coming in the breach. It doesn't take a lot to break the purge/barrier spam of a group if you do it right, I've seen good raids melted when a well-timed leap or meteor broke up their cycle and they never recovered from the debuffs/oil/fire and subsequent damage.

    I'm all kinds of fine with siege getting a buff. Eh, whatever. I can manage that. Sure, why not. But the buff amounts we're talking here are insane. The response to "spread out" is also kinda hilarious. Sure, I'll spread out my 20 people when running into a group of 40-50, that's gonna work out just fine. Surely, we won't be separated and dragged down by superior numbers except OF COURSE we will because that's the whole idea of an elite raid in this game: a collection of players that play together in such a way that their effectiveness is greater than the sum of all parts. Once you remove a group's ability to play as a team than you're not going to win outnumbered anymore.

    It's funny that you talk about spreading out your numbers (24+ group) against a group larger than yours. Seriously, how many times a night do you face larger numbers against your group? If you face larger numbers, you SHOULD have a major disadvantage. Especially when fighting openfield. It is the same for small/medium group fighting your large group, we have a disadvantage facing you openfield. During keep battles, sieges should have a major impact into the war as it was intended before this game got released.

    You fight in an area and people start deploying too many sieges against you? Spread out, move to a different location, use LoS or die. Simple enough.

    GoS does it really well. Even with a 24men group, they rarely ball up. They fight with a certain distance between each other and they win against skilled groups. This behaviour will help them a ton when new siege changes get in place.

    I'm at work so this will be fairly concise.

    GoS balls up plenty. Believe me, I fight them enough, ask Rylana. Against groups like mine they have strats that involve spreading out, but they certainly recondense when they want to hit us hard, or against groups that don't have as much DPS as mine. Remember, spreading out is a survival tactic, not a winning one. Winning in a group of any size is the same: focused dps. In a small man it's sustaining till you burst down the enemy healer, in raids it's sustaining/scattering until you recondense to aoe bomb.

    As to how many times I'm outnumbered, I'd say plenty. On Monday and Sunday of this week alone with 24 people I found myself fighting against 2-5x my number. I might have won at Aleswell too if not for lag, at the end there was simply no abilities going off, but until then we repelled groups upwards of 3x our size from the keeps and surrounding resources. On a regular night I find myself outnumbered pretty much anytime I hit a defended keep. If the people within the keep grouped up and used strategy I'd have a really tough time of it.

    In the end that's why I'm really bothered by these changes. Bulb and I wanted to effect change on the Map, we wanted to wipe big groups, defend keeps, take territory. So we learned macro strategy, built our small group of players into a competitive raid and adapted to multiple patches and metas. And we are effective at all sizes. I logged on the other day to hear zone complaining about an AD ball group terrorizing glademist, all the usual about invincible spam monkeys. Went over and killed them with 8 people and a meatbag. What stopped the 30 other people there from doing exactly that? A lack of organization, know how or skill.

    That's why this looks ugly to me. Gameplay mechanics aren't holding people back, there is no secret formula for success. But you and others in this thread talk about changes that will allow you to take on and defeat a group like mine and quite frankly you don't deserve to. If you want to beat a good guild, earn it. Build your group, learn strategy, time some stealth bombs. To everyone complaining you can't stop these "ball groups", good. You didn't build to beat them, they built themselves to beat you, and they're going to keep doing it until you stop complaining and decide to counter them.

    Or the other option, which is to complain until ZoS changes the game so some randoms in a keep are competitive with a fully optimized and organized raid. And than what's the point at all?

    As to me running around a keep for no reason, I'm game to see footage. I can't remember ever doing this unless I'm expecting incoming and am trying to keep my raid mobile.

    In the end, siege should have w counter. Everything in the game has a counter. Snares, healing, debuffs. roots, damage, shields, siege damage, etc. It makes for a decent meta. High damage groups forgo shields to burn opponents, sustain groups adapt by swapping to ground based damage reduction and heavy CC, which can than be countered by negates and stationary siege, etc. Whatever siege mechanics are added simply must have counters, otherwise they become stupidly overpowered and give anyone with the numbers to run them a rediculous advantage.

    Hell, you think keep takes are hard now, wait until an organized raid is defending a keep inner with a full siege deployment. It's going to be stupid, and the only way to take it from them will be ....

    .....

    wait for it....

    ... to stack bigger numbers yourself. Back to square *** one.

    All this wall of text sounds pretty fluid and nice but in the end, there is only one solution that you suggest. You want people to "gid gud" at the game and to form their own organized 24men ballgroup to challenge yours.

    Are we living in the same Cyrodiil ? Don't you see that the game can't support such gameplay at the moment ? First of all, ping spikes to 200ms just the fact that there are 40players on the screen (not even spamming abilities). Around a keep, it's even worse! Now you're saying that the only way that we should be able to counter a skilled organized group would be to accomplish the exact same gameplay and spike the server all the way up to 1200ms where CCs can't be broken, weapon bars can't be swapped, where alot of abilities such as streak, wrecking blow, leap, etc won't even register, where abilities such as Leap and Meteor can kill people with extreme falling damage, where people get rubberbanded all over the place?

    No thank you. And don't get me that crap that this is not your problem if Zenimax aren't able to fix their game. WE have to aknowledge the fact that WE are going to deal with this for a while and WE have to take measures to counter it.

    This being said, WE need a zerg buster that has three major objectives :

    1) Spread ball groups
    2) Help defending keep breaches
    3) Give a chance to small/medium group at overwhelming larger groups

    I understand that AOE cap and Dynamic Ultimate Regeneration are also huge factors but they are not as important as sieges during keep battles. And as Brian Wheeler said multiple times and I fully support his opinion even though it won't make everybody happy, sieges should be an important factor in Cyrodiil and right now, it is not.

    So next time, maybe bring suggestions and tweaks regarding the changes brought in the main post instead of elaborating about how bad they are.

    I feel like your issue of having high ping with only 40 people on screen and no zerg balls is a computer or internet issue on your end. Myself and many others only ever see any jump in ping when two or more blobs attack each other. That is it. I can have 100 people at a keep and it would be fine if there are no zerg balls. Additionally, I wonder if the times you are speaking of, when you hit 200 ping plus with 40 people on screen and no spamming of aoe, is occuring at the same time that 2 blobs on the other side of the map are fighting each other. That may be the case. For instance, a few nights ago in azuras i was at the home gate and was getting 200-250 oing because two ball groups were fighting at BRK.

    I appreciate your concern when you say that it may be an internet or computer problem. I know what I'm talking about though. I play this game 4-5hours a day, more on weekend, and we have regular conversations about this problem with friends. We all experiment the same issues and we live on different sides of the planet.

    The problem with the ping spiking to 200-300ms only with players around on the screen is relatively new. I've heard people saying in the forums that it may be due to the anti-bot system, who knows. It is still a thing. My suggestion here is to lower population cap and to reduce the number of campaigns to two. This will spread out large groups between two campaign instead of having them all on Azura.

    The information was still irrelevant to the main point, which was when two organized groups face each other. I've talked about it only to illustrate how fragile are the servers. In the end, as much as I would like large groups vs large groups battle to be doable without too many problems, I don't think people like the 1.2k+ ping spikes that this playstyle cause everytime.
    Edited by frozywozy on December 3, 2015 6:06AM
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    “Small minds discuss people, average minds discuss events, and great minds discuss ideas.” -Eleanor Roosevelt
    • Fix Volendrung (spawn location - weapon white on the map causing the wielder to keep it forever - usable with emperorship)
    • Remove / Change CPs System, remove current CP/noCP campaigns and introduce one 30days with lock, one with no locks
    • Fix crashes when approaching a keep under attack because of bad / wrong rendering prioritization system
    • Change emperorship to value faction score points and not alliance points - see this and this
    • Fix long loading screens (mostly caused by players joining group out of rendering range)
    • Add 2 more quickslots to the wheel or add a different wheel for sieges weaponry only
    • Fix Balista Bolts not dealing damage on walls or doors if deployed at a certain place
    • Release bigger battlegrounds with 8 to 16 players per team and only two teams
    • Fix the permanent block animation - see examples : link1 link2 link3 link4 link5
    • Gives players 10 minutes to get back into Cyrodiil after relogging / crashing
    • Add a function to ignore the Claiming system of useless rewards
    • Improve the Mailing System / Rewards of the Worthy stacking
    • Assign specific group sizes to specific campaigns (24-16-8)
    • Make forward camps impossible to place near objectives
    • Make snares only available from ground effects abilities
    • Change emperorship to last minimum 24hours
    • Fix body sliding after cc breaking too quickly
    • Remove Block Casting through Battle Spirit
    • Fix the speed drop while jumping - see video
    • Fix loading screens when keeps upgrade
    • Fix Rams going crazy (spinning around)
    • Bring back dynamic ulti regeneration
    • Fix speed bug (abilities locked)
    • Introduce dynamic population
    • Lower population cap by 20%
    • Add Snare Immunity potions
    • Bring resurrection sickness
    • Fix character desync
    • Fix cc breaking bug
    • Fix gap closer bug
    • Fix health desync
    • Fix combat bug
    • Fix streak bug
    • Fix server lag
  • TheBull
    TheBull
    ✭✭✭✭✭
    The more zerg guild leaders scream and continue to use the same ass backwards argument, the more affirming the changes incoming are what is needed.
  • PainfulFAFA
    PainfulFAFA
    ✭✭✭✭✭
    TheBull wrote: »
    The more zerg guild leaders scream and continue to use the same ass backwards argument, the more affirming the changes incoming are what is needed.

    Indeed
    As it is, a full raid can put up 20/20, and 50/50 a keep and monster-zerg the inner.
    Done in 10 minutes. Move on to the next keep. Rinse repeat.

    Keep fights in the next major update will never be the same. They'll last longer. Players will have to swiss cheese the place down and it'll be faster since damage from siege is getted increased.
    I also believe that'll be the update when Forward Camps are brought back.



    Edited by PainfulFAFA on December 3, 2015 6:18AM
    PC NA
    Aztec | AZTEC | Ahztec | Aztehk | Master of Mnem
    MagDK | Magplar | Magward | Mageblade | Stamsorc

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