Upcoming siege changes in next major update

Turelus

Starshadw wrote: »

ZOS_BrianWheeler wrote: »

Hey gang!

In the next major update we'll be adjusting damage and other effects from siege weapons. This will go in conjunction with other changes regarding repair kits and keep upgrades, but the changes noted here are specific to players effects (damage, snares, dots, etc.).

These changes are currently being tested internally and may change before they go to PTS/Live:

• Damage across the board for all siege weapons has been increased roughly 30%, but we are considering increasing that more.
• Snares have been normalized on all siege weapons that apply that debuff (ice treb, lightning ballista, oil catapult) to be a 50% snare, and last 6 seconds.
• All side effects from siege weapons (snare, healing taken reduction, siege damage increase taken) are no longer purgable.
• Oil Catapults will now also have a "Stamina damage" value added, which takes away roughly 5000 Stamina from enemy targets.
• Lightning Ballista will now also have a "Magicka Damage" value added, which takes away roughly 5000 Magicka from enemy targets.
• Ballista now turn faster and have their "scatter" variable removed, making them 100% accurate to your aimed location.
• Scattershot now adds 20% damage taken from other siege weapons instead of 10%

Thanks for any feedback regarding these changes and again, these may or may not go up to PTS/Live exactly as stated here, but this is what we're currently testing

*sigh* Why is it that every change you guys makes only reinforces the zergs and blobs, to the detriment of the smaller groups?

I mean, I grok the difficulty in trying to find the balance between single-target (aka ganking) and group (aka zergs and blobs) play in PvP. But right now, everything you've done has only made things harder and harder for the smaller group. As near as I can tell, this is because you continue to refuse to consider the possibility of timed immunities and cooldowns.

It's not that things are purge-able that's the problem. It's that things are ENDLESSLY purge-able. Instead of making nothing purege-able, what you should be doing is adding in a cooldown timer for purges that gets applied upon the first purge to hit a character.

Thus: a purge gets cast (from whatever skill, be it Purge or Dark Cloak or whatever) and a timer gets applied to the character. For the next X seconds, no further purges can take effect on that character, even if a purge skill is used. So a NB would no longer be able to simply keep cloaking over and over to continue to remove effects, people would no longer be able to spam purges, etc.

So many problems in this game could be solved via cooldown timer implementation, I really wish you devs would implement them. Another example: cc and break-free are still utterly broken and you don't seem to be able to fix it. A cooldown timer on a character being able to be cced would solve this.

I do like that you've made ballis turn faster, because lately people complain if they see someone using a balli instead of a treb due to the fact that trebs do more damage. I also like that you've tweaked the siege weaponry to try and make them more useful - thus, the stam/magicka hit, and the increased dmg from the scattershot. It always seemed sad that so many of the siege options were eschewed because people didn't see enough value in them to use them.

How does all of what you've said still not favour larger groups however. Everything you're asking for still applies to you and they still outnumber you. Making purges have a cooldown means you can't purge the effects off as often either, and they're going to have more sieges than you (as other keep pointing out).

Maulkin

Olivierko wrote: »

Darlgon wrote: »

Basic problem with addons.. they are not official ZoS product, so they can be fooled/spoofed or the game can flat out lie to them.

The API is an official product, the UI you have by default is using the same API as the community addons are AFAIK.

Scenarios like the described one are more likely to be a bug in the API or a reflection of the reality.

Basically every statement Darlgon made today has had some form of incorrect information sprinkled in. Whether it was about the siege aoe caps, or how battle spirit works or how programming APIs work.

The fact he is 100% certain he's right makes it all the more hilarious. Like this beauty XD

Manoekin wrote: »

Stacking doesn't avoid "ALL damage". You get ZERO smart healing from stacking in siege aoe because SIEGE IS NOT AOE CAPPED. Everyone takes the same *** damage. How can I explain basic game mechanics any simpler for you?.

Darlgon wrote: »

Manoekin wrote: »

Stacking doesn't avoid "ALL damage". You get ZERO smart healing from stacking in siege aoe because SIEGE IS NOT AOE CAPPED. Everyone takes the same *** damage. How can I explain basic game mechanics any simpler for you?.

@Manoekin

You cant.. because you are wrong.

ZOS_BrianWheeler wrote: »

For clarification, Siege weapons have no cap.

Darlgon

mike.gaziotisb16_ESO wrote: »

Olivierko wrote: »

Darlgon wrote: »

Basic problem with addons.. they are not official ZoS product, so they can be fooled/spoofed or the game can flat out lie to them.

The API is an official product, the UI you have by default is using the same API as the community addons are AFAIK.

Scenarios like the described one are more likely to be a bug in the API or a reflection of the reality.

Basically every statement Darlgon made today has had some form of incorrect information sprinkled in. Where it was about the siege aoe caps, or how battle spirit works or how programming APIs work.

The fact he is 100% certain he's right makes it all the more hilarious. Like this beauty XD

Manoekin wrote: »

Stacking doesn't avoid "ALL damage". You get ZERO smart healing from stacking in siege aoe because SIEGE IS NOT AOE CAPPED. Everyone takes the same *** damage. How can I explain basic game mechanics any simpler for you?.

Darlgon wrote: »

Manoekin wrote: »

Stacking doesn't avoid "ALL damage". You get ZERO smart healing from stacking in siege aoe because SIEGE IS NOT AOE CAPPED. Everyone takes the same *** damage. How can I explain basic game mechanics any simpler for you?.

@Manoekin

You cant.. because you are wrong.

ZOS_BrianWheeler wrote: »

For clarification, Siege weapons have no cap.

I stand by and use the official ZoS statements, made by @Wrobel that you did NOT quote, until corrected by another ZoS statement, which I immediately added into my post.

Wrobel wrote: »

The intention of the caps and falloff is that AoE damage will be able to outpace healing in large group battles, but not dominate it. Healing abilities currently cap at 6 targets, where damage can hit up to 60 targets (100% to the first 6, 50% to the next 24, and 25% to the last 30).

He DID NOT say, except seige, which as Brian noted above, is counted as originating at a player, thus, presumable under the same Battle Spirit rules as other player cast skills, until altered by Brian.

Maulkin

Darlgon wrote: »

mike.gaziotisb16_ESO wrote: »

Olivierko wrote: »

Darlgon wrote: »

Basic problem with addons.. they are not official ZoS product, so they can be fooled/spoofed or the game can flat out lie to them.

The API is an official product, the UI you have by default is using the same API as the community addons are AFAIK.

Scenarios like the described one are more likely to be a bug in the API or a reflection of the reality.

Basically every statement Darlgon made today has had some form of incorrect information sprinkled in. Where it was about the siege aoe caps, or how battle spirit works or how programming APIs work.

The fact he is 100% certain he's right makes it all the more hilarious. Like this beauty XD

Manoekin wrote: »

Stacking doesn't avoid "ALL damage". You get ZERO smart healing from stacking in siege aoe because SIEGE IS NOT AOE CAPPED. Everyone takes the same *** damage. How can I explain basic game mechanics any simpler for you?.

Darlgon wrote: »

Manoekin wrote: »

Stacking doesn't avoid "ALL damage". You get ZERO smart healing from stacking in siege aoe because SIEGE IS NOT AOE CAPPED. Everyone takes the same *** damage. How can I explain basic game mechanics any simpler for you?.

@Manoekin

You cant.. because you are wrong.

ZOS_BrianWheeler wrote: »

For clarification, Siege weapons have no cap.

I stand by and use the official ZoS statements, made by @Wrobel that you did NOT quote, until corrected by another ZoS statement, which I immediately added into my post.

Wrobel wrote: »

The intention of the caps and falloff is that AoE damage will be able to outpace healing in large group battles, but not dominate it. Healing abilities currently cap at 6 targets, where damage can hit up to 60 targets (100% to the first 6, 50% to the next 24, and 25% to the last 30).

He DID NOT say, except seige, which as Brian noted above, is counted as originating at a player, thus, presumable under the same Battle Spirit rules as other player cast skills, until altered by Brian.

Brian has many times in the past mentioned there are no AoE caps on siege. Wrobel is not in charge of siege, so I'm not sure what he has to do with all of this.

Anyway, if you just play the game you find out pretty quickly siege is not capped. You shouldn't need anyone to tell you.

Try not being so so certain when you're obviously wrong next time

frozywozy

Zheg wrote: »

zornyan wrote: »

Dear reds and yellows, now your 50 man zergs running into our keeps will be net with death, no longer will you stand there completly ignoring 2 or 3 of us firing siege into your midst, now you will die, or have to back off.

This sounds like a good change, gives small groups or individual players to hit hard and defend once more.

Sincerely

Blues

And that right there is the terribad mentality that has permeated these forums for months, and gives ZOS the impression that this is both healthy and desirable for pvp. In what world does it make sense for 2 or 3 people to left click a few times and wipe 50 people? All of the 'small groups' seem to want to be able to just sit off to the side in safety and click a few siege and see massive AP ticks scrolling on their screen. If you want AP, use your abilities and actually fight. If you can't kill them, they either outnumber you so significantly you're going to need to get reinforcements and try again, they're just better than you, or there are mechanic changes that wroebel needs to fix. Just because there are 2-3 people sitting alone in a keep and 50 people pour through a breach, that doesn't mean those 2-3 people should have any realistic chance of wiping them by left clicking once or twice. It's the effort/skill equivalent of running by yourself into a large group, light attacking, and expecting to kill them because prox det doesn't work so well when it's just you.

What you explained in this paragraph is the typical mentality of every single member part of a large 24men group has been praising in these entire 24pages. They want people to use player abilities, ballgroup strategies such as ulti dumbs, stacking on crown, mass barriers, purges and smart healing.

You're trying to convince ZOS that this game, which was promoted in the first place as a large siege warfare involving keep, outpost, ressource captures, that sieges should hit as much as a light attack and that it should not threaten your large ballgroup and incentive them to spread out at any point during a battle.

You're praising that your large group WILL stay stacked up no matter what happen because IF your large group must spread out, your leader will have a hard time controlling the ball, people are going to get picked up by players who have slotted single target abilities and everyone will panic and won't know what to do.

In reality, it is very easy to use the "spread out and reform" tactic in a ballgroup as I, Moon Die, Crystalized and probably several other leaders have done it in the past to avoid ulti dumbs and fake an attack on said group. In this case, it is just the same thing, except you do it to pick up siege operators until you reform again.

Do you know what happens when you give 2-3 people the ability to defend against 50 players with stupidly overpowered siege like so many people seem to want? Literally your entire faction can stack to push a single keep while 2-3 people defend your keeps behind you. If you stack that many people in one spot, the rest of your keeps should be easy pickings because you're dumb enough to stack that many and not defend objectives properly. Yeah, this scenario sounds great for 'stopping the ball groups and stopping the lag'.

If you think that 2-3people, even 15 can defend a keep against an organized group successfully with the changes (tweaked down a little bit) proposed and the advices given to guide organized groups into developping new strategies that we mentioned so many times in this thread already, you either need to read again, you are stubborn about your opinion or you simply don't understand the fact that the siege / purge changes proposed have the goal to SLOW DOWN the opposite forces to give time to reinforcements to ride back to the keep being attacked and offer a FAIR CHALLENGE WITH EQUAL NUMBERS.

Sorry, but tactically the best thing for small groups and individual players is to be on the transit lines stopping reinforcements. If they want to be at the keep defending, that's great, we need a few people there, but they should have zero expectations of being god-like and somehow wiping 20 times their number. Having a few people running solo putting up siege to target breaches/flags/whatever while organized defenders take on the attackers is always beneficial, even in today's meta. The problem arises when those few people think they should be able to wipe said attackers solely with siege. Almost no one criticizing these changes is saying that there shouldn't be any buffs at all to siege, the criticism has been that some of these changes are broken as eff and give far too much power for the dude on top of a random wall spamming left click.

The way you speak, it's like you think solo / small scale people have to pick between defending a keep or cutting the transit lines. In reality, it's the fact that when an organized group assaults a keep, usually, if they do it right, they assault a keep without proper defenses there if your scouts have done their job properly and that results obviously in smaller numbers defending said keep.

Nafirian

TheBull wrote: »

Satiar wrote: »

Bull, Xsorus, the level of hate you guys level at groups is just crazy. I don't know where it comes from or what spawns it, but apparently just being in a guild that runs more than your internal limit of players means our opinion is trash and not to be heard just by merit of who our friends are and who we run with. What even is that? We like to play in a group big enough to take on map objectives and fight similar minded groups, that's literally it. The stuff pouring out of you guys at people like me and my friends is straight up toxic.

I do not mind large groups per se. Watching large groups spam purge after purge after purge, removing and at times even negating all incoming damage, is something that has bothered me since the early game.

Purge is too powerful, game breaking, allows the ignoring of key game systems. Key game systems such as damage over time, roots, snares, heal debuffs, and if timed right direct damage itself.

If you and your friends take it personally, you shouldn't. I believe the incoming changes are good for the game. It just so happens that those who do not what these changes happen to spend 99% of their time in large groups. Groups that just so happen to lean on purge very heavily.

The more complaints I see coming from the members of these groups and their leaders, the more confident I am that these changes are what's needed. The large group purge purge purge...purge purge purge... play style is toxic. It needs to go. Nothing personal.

These changes are needed but to this extent no ZOS yet again are over doing stuff and changing stuff ina good way THEN GOING OVERBOARD, its stupid i had hope when i saw this now its just put up seige wipe smaller because have more numbers so we can do more siege, or hit us with mag dmg so our healers cant heal the inc dmg. And stam dmg so our stam builds cant do the dmg they need or rapid us up to move just nice simple change to siege would have been nice but ya know ZOS reinventing the wheel for like the 48th time.

Kwivur

Nafirian wrote: »

TheBull wrote: »

Satiar wrote: »

Bull, Xsorus, the level of hate you guys level at groups is just crazy. I don't know where it comes from or what spawns it, but apparently just being in a guild that runs more than your internal limit of players means our opinion is trash and not to be heard just by merit of who our friends are and who we run with. What even is that? We like to play in a group big enough to take on map objectives and fight similar minded groups, that's literally it. The stuff pouring out of you guys at people like me and my friends is straight up toxic.

I do not mind large groups per se. Watching large groups spam purge after purge after purge, removing and at times even negating all incoming damage, is something that has bothered me since the early game.

Purge is too powerful, game breaking, allows the ignoring of key game systems. Key game systems such as damage over time, roots, snares, heal debuffs, and if timed right direct damage itself.

If you and your friends take it personally, you shouldn't. I believe the incoming changes are good for the game. It just so happens that those who do not what these changes happen to spend 99% of their time in large groups. Groups that just so happen to lean on purge very heavily.

The more complaints I see coming from the members of these groups and their leaders, the more confident I am that these changes are what's needed. The large group purge purge purge...purge purge purge... play style is toxic. It needs to go. Nothing personal.

These changes are needed but to this extent no ZOS yet again are over doing stuff and changing stuff ina good way THEN GOING OVERBOARD its stupid i had hope when i saw this now its just put up seige wipe smaller becuase have more numbers so we can do more siege or hit us with mag dmg so our healers cant heal the inc dmg and stam dmg so our stam builds cant do the dmg they need or rapid us up to move just nice simple change to siege would have been nice but ya know ZOS reinventing the wheel for like the 48th time.

You should really look into commas and periods.. seriously

Lava_Croft

I think the whole idea of not always stacking on crown is confusing the AoE blobs. Spread out!

frozywozy

Lava_Croft wrote: »

I think the whole idea of not always stacking on crown is confusing the AoE blobs. Spread out!

There you go

Starshadw

Turelus wrote: »

How does all of what you've said still not favour larger groups however. Everything you're asking for still applies to you and they still outnumber you. Making purges have a cooldown means you can't purge the effects off as often either, and they're going to have more sieges than you (as other keep pointing out).

It's two separate issues, really. The coming changes favor zergs/blobs, but they are also flat-out BROKEN mechanics, thus my suggestions on how to un-break them.

Fixing the current "Zerg/Blob Trumps All" attitude goes WAY beyond the changes being talked about here. I'm honestly not even sure it CAN be fixed, which is a sad thing to have to say. Every single idea that's popped into my head - I can twist it and see how a zerg/blob could use it. Which is exactly what's happened with proxy det, which was supposed to be the zerg-buster (yet what we see are zergs running 6+ proxy dets non-stop to roll over smaller groups)

Nafirian

Kwivur wrote: »

Nafirian wrote: »

TheBull wrote: »

Satiar wrote: »

Bull, Xsorus, the level of hate you guys level at groups is just crazy. I don't know where it comes from or what spawns it, but apparently just being in a guild that runs more than your internal limit of players means our opinion is trash and not to be heard just by merit of who our friends are and who we run with. What even is that? We like to play in a group big enough to take on map objectives and fight similar minded groups, that's literally it. The stuff pouring out of you guys at people like me and my friends is straight up toxic.

I do not mind large groups per se. Watching large groups spam purge after purge after purge, removing and at times even negating all incoming damage, is something that has bothered me since the early game.

Purge is too powerful, game breaking, allows the ignoring of key game systems. Key game systems such as damage over time, roots, snares, heal debuffs, and if timed right direct damage itself.

If you and your friends take it personally, you shouldn't. I believe the incoming changes are good for the game. It just so happens that those who do not what these changes happen to spend 99% of their time in large groups. Groups that just so happen to lean on purge very heavily.

The more complaints I see coming from the members of these groups and their leaders, the more confident I am that these changes are what's needed. The large group purge purge purge...purge purge purge... play style is toxic. It needs to go. Nothing personal.

These changes are needed but to this extent no ZOS yet again are over doing stuff and changing stuff ina good way THEN GOING OVERBOARD its stupid i had hope when i saw this now its just put up seige wipe smaller becuase have more numbers so we can do more siege or hit us with mag dmg so our healers cant heal the inc dmg and stam dmg so our stam builds cant do the dmg they need or rapid us up to move just nice simple change to siege would have been nice but ya know ZOS reinventing the wheel for like the 48th time.

You should really look into commas and periods.. seriously

EFFORT!

Zheg

frozywozy wrote: »

Zheg wrote: »

zornyan wrote: »

Dear reds and yellows, now your 50 man zergs running into our keeps will be net with death, no longer will you stand there completly ignoring 2 or 3 of us firing siege into your midst, now you will die, or have to back off.

This sounds like a good change, gives small groups or individual players to hit hard and defend once more.

Sincerely

Blues

And that right there is the terribad mentality that has permeated these forums for months, and gives ZOS the impression that this is both healthy and desirable for pvp. In what world does it make sense for 2 or 3 people to left click a few times and wipe 50 people? All of the 'small groups' seem to want to be able to just sit off to the side in safety and click a few siege and see massive AP ticks scrolling on their screen. If you want AP, use your abilities and actually fight. If you can't kill them, they either outnumber you so significantly you're going to need to get reinforcements and try again, they're just better than you, or there are mechanic changes that wroebel needs to fix. Just because there are 2-3 people sitting alone in a keep and 50 people pour through a breach, that doesn't mean those 2-3 people should have any realistic chance of wiping them by left clicking once or twice. It's the effort/skill equivalent of running by yourself into a large group, light attacking, and expecting to kill them because prox det doesn't work so well when it's just you.

What you explained in this paragraph is the typical mentality of every single member part of a large 24men group has been praising in these entire 24pages. They want people to use player abilities, ballgroup strategies such as ulti dumbs, stacking on crown, mass barriers, purges and smart healing.

You're trying to convince ZOS that this game, which was promoted in the first place as a large siege warfare involving keep, outpost, ressource captures, that sieges should hit as much as a light attack and that it should not threaten your large ballgroup and incentive them to spread out at any point during a battle.

You're praising that your large group WILL stay stacked up no matter what happen because IF your large group must spread out, your leader will have a hard time controlling the ball, people are going to get picked up by players who have slotted single target abilities and everyone will panic and won't know what to do.

In reality, it is very easy to use the "spread out and reform" tactic in a ballgroup as I, Moon Die, Crystalized and probably several other leaders have done it in the past to avoid ulti dumbs and fake an attack on said group. In this case, it is just the same thing, except you do it to pick up siege operators until you reform again.

Do you know what happens when you give 2-3 people the ability to defend against 50 players with stupidly overpowered siege like so many people seem to want? Literally your entire faction can stack to push a single keep while 2-3 people defend your keeps behind you. If you stack that many people in one spot, the rest of your keeps should be easy pickings because you're dumb enough to stack that many and not defend objectives properly. Yeah, this scenario sounds great for 'stopping the ball groups and stopping the lag'.

If you think that 2-3people, even 15 can defend a keep against an organized group successfully with the changes (tweaked down a little bit) proposed and the advices given to guide organized groups into developping new strategies that we mentioned so many times in this thread already, you either need to read again, you are stubborn about your opinion or you simply don't understand the fact that the siege / purge changes proposed have the goal to SLOW DOWN the opposite forces to give time to reinforcements to ride back to the keep being attacked and offer a FAIR CHALLENGE WITH EQUAL NUMBERS.

Sorry, but tactically the best thing for small groups and individual players is to be on the transit lines stopping reinforcements. If they want to be at the keep defending, that's great, we need a few people there, but they should have zero expectations of being god-like and somehow wiping 20 times their number. Having a few people running solo putting up siege to target breaches/flags/whatever while organized defenders take on the attackers is always beneficial, even in today's meta. The problem arises when those few people think they should be able to wipe said attackers solely with siege. Almost no one criticizing these changes is saying that there shouldn't be any buffs at all to siege, the criticism has been that some of these changes are broken as eff and give far too much power for the dude on top of a random wall spamming left click.

The way you speak, it's like you think solo / small scale people have to pick between defending a keep or cutting the transit lines. In reality, it's the fact that when an organized group assaults a keep, usually, if they do it right, they assault a keep without proper defenses there if your scouts have done their job properly and that results obviously in smaller numbers defending said keep.

Stop making (poor) assumptions about other peoples thoughts. No, I don't think 2/3 people can wipe 50 with these changes, the comment was directed at other comments and a trending mentality that people think this should be a thing, and keep providing feedback to ZOS suggesting as much. In terms of broken to fine, oil catapult changes are mad broken as is simply because of how stam works, meatbag changes are dumb for (what should be) obvious reasons, and the rest of the siege buffs don't seem to be too OP and probably will be fine.

You may want the new meta to be who has the numbers to drop more siege, but most of us don't find that appealing. Clicking left click every few seconds is even less engaging than spamming light attack in a fight, because at least then you can click every second. Much skill. Much fun.

Brian can buff siege without adding broken mechanics like oil catas that will be in the game for months until the next release. All of these strong changes are happening at the same time as purge and barrier caps, the smart people know that we'll be stuck with any broken changes for months, since that seems to be lost on you, I can think of at least one inference to make.

This isn't about large groups, this is about overturned and poorly thought out changes. If the meta becomes spread and siege, large groups will do that and still wipe small groups - they'll just be doing so by left clicking every few seconds rather than having to actually use skills and move.

Satiar

Spreading out is a valid tactic to survive fights but it doesn't WIN you fights. To push heavily defended objectives (like say, Chalman, or Alessia or Bleakers with 50 EP jammed in it) you eventually have to focus DPS and heals.

How you guys don't understand this is insane to me. How do I "spread out" inside a keep? How do I "spread out" inside a keep with 2x my number in it? The way to beat superior numbers is superior organization, and that's what groups do. Of course this thread is simply filled with people who get beaten by groups built to take out an unorganized enemy and tell me, "Hey, why not spread out (so that you're easier to kill and lack the focused DPS to take down any serious resistance) Or go into the keep a few people at a time (so we can kill you a few people at a time instead of dealing with a solid, unified force). I think those of you advocating this, especially Frozn, understand these are not winning strategies, because is is exactly what our opponents do when they get run over: spread out, refuse to work together to focus DPS and heals, and die one at a time straggling into a well defended breach.

It just sounds like a bunch of solo players who hate grouping and organizing advocating a system where grouping and organizing is dis-incentivized, and solo players get to take on "those hated 24-mans".

What is actually going to happen is that this will incentivize even more PvDoor and more zerging. Because right now keep takes against a knowledge enemy with even moderate random support can be tough. If factions can no longer count on organized guild groups to spearhead keep takes against tough resistance, the only remaining answers are:

Bring A Bigger Zerg

or

Really Quickly PvDoor A Keep Behind Front Lines

Because people only gonna walk into a meat grinder so many times before they either give up or bring the *** faction with them.

frozywozy

Starshadw wrote: »

Turelus wrote: »

How does all of what you've said still not favour larger groups however. Everything you're asking for still applies to you and they still outnumber you. Making purges have a cooldown means you can't purge the effects off as often either, and they're going to have more sieges than you (as other keep pointing out).

It's two separate issues, really. The coming changes favor zergs/blobs, but they are also flat-out BROKEN mechanics, thus my suggestions on how to un-break them.

Fixing the current "Zerg/Blob Trumps All" attitude goes WAY beyond the changes being talked about here. I'm honestly not even sure it CAN be fixed, which is a sad thing to have to say. Every single idea that's popped into my head - I can twist it and see how a zerg/blob could use it. Which is exactly what's happened with proxy det, which was supposed to be the zerg-buster (yet what we see are zergs running 6+ proxy dets non-stop to roll over smaller groups)

The fixes suggested in this thread are, like you said, just one move forward to fix and balance the 24men blob VS medium group situation. AOE cap and Dynamic Ulti Generation are also a major goal to make it fair for everyone.

However, what you seem to forget is that the incentive of this thread is also to help server performances by forcing 24men blobs to spread out from time to time and by changing the purge mechanics so people don't spam it as much as they do right now creating considerable amount of calculations on the server.

Zheg

frozywozy wrote: »

Starshadw wrote: »

Turelus wrote: »

How does all of what you've said still not favour larger groups however. Everything you're asking for still applies to you and they still outnumber you. Making purges have a cooldown means you can't purge the effects off as often either, and they're going to have more sieges than you (as other keep pointing out).

It's two separate issues, really. The coming changes favor zergs/blobs, but they are also flat-out BROKEN mechanics, thus my suggestions on how to un-break them.

Fixing the current "Zerg/Blob Trumps All" attitude goes WAY beyond the changes being talked about here. I'm honestly not even sure it CAN be fixed, which is a sad thing to have to say. Every single idea that's popped into my head - I can twist it and see how a zerg/blob could use it. Which is exactly what's happened with proxy det, which was supposed to be the zerg-buster (yet what we see are zergs running 6+ proxy dets non-stop to roll over smaller groups)

The fixes suggested in this thread are, like you said, just one move forward to fix and balance the 24men blob VS medium group situation. AOE cap and Dynamic Ulti Generation are also a major goal to make it fair for everyone.

However, what you seem to forget is that the incentive of this thread is also to help server performances by forcing 24men blobs to spread out from time to time and by changing the purge mechanics so people don't spam it as much as they do right now creating considerable amount of calculations on the server.

24 man blobs can fight eachother just fine on servers other than azuras. We spent an entire month fighting both gos and swp raids at the same keep shortly after IC, and zero lag. The slideshow happens when you have a critical mass of players at a single keep, regardless of whether they're in a group or in 7 different small mans. Many posts in these threads say just bring more numbers, you should need an army to take a defended keep, etc etc. These changes will make it necessary to bring more numbers to take a defended keep, which will make the performance even worse. Obscene numbers are the issue, and always have been.

frozywozy

Zheg wrote: »

frozywozy wrote: »

Starshadw wrote: »

Turelus wrote: »

How does all of what you've said still not favour larger groups however. Everything you're asking for still applies to you and they still outnumber you. Making purges have a cooldown means you can't purge the effects off as often either, and they're going to have more sieges than you (as other keep pointing out).

It's two separate issues, really. The coming changes favor zergs/blobs, but they are also flat-out BROKEN mechanics, thus my suggestions on how to un-break them.

Fixing the current "Zerg/Blob Trumps All" attitude goes WAY beyond the changes being talked about here. I'm honestly not even sure it CAN be fixed, which is a sad thing to have to say. Every single idea that's popped into my head - I can twist it and see how a zerg/blob could use it. Which is exactly what's happened with proxy det, which was supposed to be the zerg-buster (yet what we see are zergs running 6+ proxy dets non-stop to roll over smaller groups)

The fixes suggested in this thread are, like you said, just one move forward to fix and balance the 24men blob VS medium group situation. AOE cap and Dynamic Ulti Generation are also a major goal to make it fair for everyone.

However, what you seem to forget is that the incentive of this thread is also to help server performances by forcing 24men blobs to spread out from time to time and by changing the purge mechanics so people don't spam it as much as they do right now creating considerable amount of calculations on the server.

24 man blobs can fight eachother just fine on servers other than azuras. We spent an entire month fighting both gos and swp raids at the same keep shortly after IC, and zero lag. The slideshow happens when you have a critical mass of players at a single keep, regardless of whether they're in a group or in 7 different small mans. Many posts in these threads say just bring more numbers, you should need an army to take a defended keep, etc etc. These changes will make it necessary to bring more numbers to take a defended keep, which will make the performance even worse. Obscene numbers are the issue, and always have been.

Oh I believe and totally agree with you here. If you put two organized 24men groups in an empty or almost empty server and make them fight each other, the fights will be performing really well without any major problem.

This is one of the main reason why so many players, and unofficial TESO podcasts have been promoting battlegrounds and arenas in the first place. Smaller PvP instances would be lagfree and really interesting.

This being said, in Azura, as you pointed out, it is another story. As I said in other posts, if they reduce the max population cap, the amount of campaigns to 2 and reduce the size of a large group to 16 instead of 24 on one of those remaining campaigns, I'm sure it would improve performances greatly. With only two campaigns, all competitive large guilds running 24men groups would not stack Azura Star anymore and could split between two campaigns, decreasing chances that two major fights happen at the same time on the server and reducing calculations in the meantime.

Afterward, Zenimax could monitor the amount of players queuing at primetime into both campaigns and add a third one when necessary. Last two days, I have seen a major gain of players PvPing. I would not doubt that it is something to do with people getting bored of all the new games that got released recently and slowly coming back to Teso.

For example, yesterday at around 10:00pm ish, Azura Star was max pop all factions, Trueflame was 3bars DC, 3bars EP, 2bars AD, Haderus was 3bars AD, 2bars EP , Axe was 2bars EP and 2bars AD and BWB was 2bars for everyone. HUGE difference comparing to last week which was Azura Star max pop and everything else 1bar DURING primetime on several occasions. Really happy about it.

Chrlynsch

Siege was nerfed with IC and is in need of a buff. Like the unpurge and resource drain.

Starshadw

frozywozy wrote: »

However, what you seem to forget is that the incentive of this thread is also to help server performances by forcing 24men blobs to spread out from time to time and by changing the purge mechanics so people don't spam it as much as they do right now creating considerable amount of calculations on the server.

I maintain that adding cooldown timers would discourage skill spamming as well (hell, if it comes to that, add cooldowns to the skills themselves - cast Purge, and the skill is greyed out for X seconds so you can't cast it again), without the need to break mechanics. Because with these changes, Purge has just been made pretty much useless as a skill. Which then makes one wonder why the skill exists at all.

Maulkin

Starshadw wrote: »

Turelus wrote: »

How does all of what you've said still not favour larger groups however. Everything you're asking for still applies to you and they still outnumber you. Making purges have a cooldown means you can't purge the effects off as often either, and they're going to have more sieges than you (as other keep pointing out).

It's two separate issues, really. The coming changes favor zergs/blobs, but they are also flat-out BROKEN mechanics, thus my suggestions on how to un-break them.

Fixing the current "Zerg/Blob Trumps All" attitude goes WAY beyond the changes being talked about here. I'm honestly not even sure it CAN be fixed, which is a sad thing to have to say. Every single idea that's popped into my head - I can twist it and see how a zerg/blob could use it. Which is exactly what's happened with proxy det, which was supposed to be the zerg-buster (yet what we see are zergs running 6+ proxy dets non-stop to roll over smaller groups)

Looks it's quite simple, I'll explain it to you, but first you we must clarify what we're talking about because you seem a bit confused. You keep talking about zergs/blobs interchangeably.

Zerg ≠ Blob

By zerg we mean a large number of randoms. Usually the ungroupped kind, though some even include the PUGs into that category. A blob is 99% of the time an organised guild with TS. You can't get a bunch of people to move together without voice comms. We're humans not schools of fish.

This particular change is to help people deal with the over-efficiency of blobbing, not zerging.

Reducing zerging is another subject altogether. Zerging gets countered by making solo/small-scale play more attractive. Ways to do that are:
1) Removing aoe caps, thus giving them the chance to feel "heroic" by wiping larger groups with coordinated damage
2) Making small-scale play more survivable. Cost stacking on dodge/blink, no regen while blocking, no dynamic ults and my favourite.... the CC when getting charged at, they all have made solo/small scale life very very hard.

Back to blobs now, they are medium up to xlarge numbers of players that move and spread AoE damage in an area. They all need to move in unison to synchronise damage, to stay within the heal range and to not be individually picked apart. As such they thrive on:
1) PBAoEs
2) Anything that allows free movement (instant skills, speed buffs, purges etc)

The AoE cap protection, though a terrible mechanic, is not the reason they blob up. It's just an added bonus thrown in by Wrobel for reasons unknown to anyone and everyone who is not a ZOS developer.

As you understand proxy det failed it's purpose the day Wrobel made it instant. No one uses Inevitable Detonation in a blob, do they? Because it roots people in place for 2".

The purpose of buffing siege is to help spread out or wipe the blob. It will be mostly used by the zerg against the blob. Though blobs, depending on size, also make use of siege when defending a structure. The bigger the blob the more people it can afford to have on siege.

The reason why I know these changes won't have the impact some nay-sayers are saying they will have (like ruin PvP or whatever) is rather simple. 80% of the proposed changes existed in the game before. And when they did, people blobbed less. At worst what could happen, is that they have no effect at all. That's the worst case scenario I can foresee.

Why do I say 80% of the changes were in the game before?
1) Buffing siege damage will merely bring it back to what it was during the 1.6 patch. The ratio of (siege damage)/(average health) is currently at the lowest it's ever been in this game.
2) Oil catapult snare was unpurgeable until 1.6
3) Healing debuffs had higher values and stacked with each-other up until 1.6. At 1.6 all effects got standardised in Majors/Minors and debuffs stopped stacking
4) Purge would make you blow up in Walls of Elements so you couldn't liberally use purge between versions 1.3-1.5. Which meant the heal debuffs mentioned above would stay with you for a long time.

The only genuinely new mechanic added is the stamina/magicka drain. That's it. Everything else, we've had before (and ground oils as well). As a result these changes hold no fears for me. They are not a journey into the unknown.

What I find ironic is that people keep talking about how much better the game was during 1.5 (which it was) but they only keep talking about dynamic ultimates, soft-caps etc but they keep forgetting the pivotal role played by siege in keep defense and in helping wipe a blob. Breaches were a death trap and soon they'll be a death trap again. I'm hoping they won't overbuff siege, it shouldn't be the be all and end all, but it needs a serious buff no doubt.

Satiar

I don't know what you mean when you say "people used to blob less". Pain trains have been around since beta, theory crafted in alpha. There are only a few guilds left that still do it, as compared to the many that did. If anything it's less common now than before, because most people got bored/frustrated with the game and moved on.

Like, 1.5 the reason negating was so damn effective was that people typically stacked up HARD, both your group and the enemy.

driosketch

Darlgon wrote: »

Catching up on this thread.. in case no one answered you in the 24ish pages...

driosketch wrote: »

Okay someone explain to me how non purgable meat bags favors numbers? Often I have found myself dending keeps against a larger seige group and watching as they shrug off my counter siege. I've also been on the reverse, droping purifying ritual and a breath between reloads. As a defender, with less room to place seige, this is better. (And before anyone says it, it is a bit easier to hit players on the ground below than up on the wall.) A small group could also decimate a zergball rushing through a breach with this change.

I guess a large number of spread out players could slaughter a group of players stacked in a train spamming AoE. But that would require smarter play on the former's part, so I don't have an issue with that.

For a 3-5 player gank group vs. a dozen or fewer, the seige is too slow to be an issue.

Bottom line, this doesn't hurt small groups, it hurts the balls.

@driosketch

If you think 3-5 as a small group.. you must have not played in Cyro since Beta. It is indeed a gank squad, useful to take out stragglers then to either Streak away to infinity or be crushed by the group when they come back to rez the dead.

Picture 12 defenders, at BRK, when Arrius gets 20 seige and flags. They arrive from their ride, and 36 attackers have already setup inside the keep. AS THEY try to cross the courtyard, which has already been cleared of guards, they get hit with

Meatbag. six of them for 4420, the other six for 2210.. and all of them have an unpurgable debuff to healing.
Next, a oil catapult, six for 3400 ... and the rest for 1700, plus, taking 5000 stamina from ALL.
Healing springs, is cast, but already debuffed to hit only six of them at half power, heals six for 1200, and the rest for nothing.
Next a fire treb, six for 13260 and all of them for three ticks of 6600. IF unpurgable, they ALL get hit for 19820.

Thats.. all of them hit with 22730 dmg. If they got unlucky on all three, they were hit for 40900.

How many do you think made it more than three hits?

Now.. turn that around.. 24 players at BRK, when Arrius flags with 20 seige. When they arrive at BRK, they find most of the 12 attackers are using two Stone trebs. As such, say they actually breached the outer... without man power to put three seige on the doors, they are all on the inner.

The 24 man, runs inside, unchallenged,

THEY set up a Meatbag, Oil Cat and Fire treb...

See where this would end up?

But, for arguments sake, lets say the 12 attackers did indeed set up Meatbag, Oil Cat and Fire Treb on courtyard and had it manned,, slowing down the keep take.

Meatbag. six of them for 4420, the other 18 for 2210.. and all of them have an unpurgable debuff to healing.
Next, a oil catapult, six for 3400 ... and the rest for 1700, plus, taking 5000 stamina from ALL.
Healing springs, is cast, but already debuffed to hit only six of them at half power, heals six for 1200, and the rest for nothing.
Next a fire treb, six for 13260 and all of them for three ticks of 6600. IF unpurgable, they ALL get hit for 19820.

Thats.. all of them hit with 22730 dmg. If they got unlucky on all three, they were hit for 40900. Except, the chances of them being the unlucky three decreases, because they are a group of 24, instead of 12.

How does this change benefit smaller groups again?

@Darlgon
And you must not play objectives in Cyrodiil very much if you think that's how these keep scenarios would play out. We are talking about the most key and arguably the most defensible keep in EP home territory. It's defense would not come down to 12 players, let alone 12 out of BRK. Personally, I've only known 12 man groups to PvDoor a keep or to defend an outpost or resource tower. I've seen a group of 20 do what you describe. But for the sake of argument, let's say a 12 man team rides in to save Arrius.

Arrius faces north, and the LM side is a narrow strip. So 20 seige is likely on the mine side, though which resorce/s are flipped would be a big clue where they are. This means the 12 man group is either entering the opposite side from seige, or through the breach behind the siege line. Now if the attackers are caught unaware, the group could make a direct run for the front door. Otherwise they could also swing wide to the north around to the other side while kiting a few attackers, or run behind the siege line along the wall, loop the tower and enter the upper deck door.

It's unlikely even a 36 group would be sitting on three none wall damage siege aimed at the exact path the small group would take. Let alone hit everyone dead center every time unless they were all mindlessly stacked on the crown. Also, healing springs? Are they staying in the circle for all the heal ticks too, is that how they get hit three times in a row? Probably everyone is also running an identical PBAoE build, but maybe swap a temp healer into a slot. Even one could heal through the meatbag damage and debuff. A potion could compensate for the oil drain, and flame DoT is still purgable. Once inside, assuming they took the smart way in, they can now set up siege themselves to defend against the bigger group.

The second scenario features a small group already working against a defensible position, also out numbered, and against what are described as a capable group. Small group would probably wipe today under those three disadvantages even without the siege change or even if caps were removed. Frankly, unless battle spirit was changed to double your stats when fighting double your number, or the large group didn't know how to fight, I don't see any reason the small group should win here.

Manoekin

Darlgon wrote: »

mike.gaziotisb16_ESO wrote: »

Olivierko wrote: »

Darlgon wrote: »

Basic problem with addons.. they are not official ZoS product, so they can be fooled/spoofed or the game can flat out lie to them.

The API is an official product, the UI you have by default is using the same API as the community addons are AFAIK.

Scenarios like the described one are more likely to be a bug in the API or a reflection of the reality.

Basically every statement Darlgon made today has had some form of incorrect information sprinkled in. Where it was about the siege aoe caps, or how battle spirit works or how programming APIs work.

The fact he is 100% certain he's right makes it all the more hilarious. Like this beauty XD

Manoekin wrote: »

Stacking doesn't avoid "ALL damage". You get ZERO smart healing from stacking in siege aoe because SIEGE IS NOT AOE CAPPED. Everyone takes the same *** damage. How can I explain basic game mechanics any simpler for you?.

Darlgon wrote: »

Manoekin wrote: »

Stacking doesn't avoid "ALL damage". You get ZERO smart healing from stacking in siege aoe because SIEGE IS NOT AOE CAPPED. Everyone takes the same *** damage. How can I explain basic game mechanics any simpler for you?.

@Manoekin

You cant.. because you are wrong.

ZOS_BrianWheeler wrote: »

For clarification, Siege weapons have no cap.

I stand by and use the official ZoS statements, made by @Wrobel that you did NOT quote, until corrected by another ZoS statement, which I immediately added into my post.

Wrobel wrote: »

The intention of the caps and falloff is that AoE damage will be able to outpace healing in large group battles, but not dominate it. Healing abilities currently cap at 6 targets, where damage can hit up to 60 targets (100% to the first 6, 50% to the next 24, and 25% to the last 30).

He DID NOT say, except seige, which as Brian noted above, is counted as originating at a player, thus, presumable under the same Battle Spirit rules as other player cast skills, until altered by Brian.

I don't blame you for not knowing. There are a lot of things in this game you can't know without testing them first because the information is not there. Theorycrafting is really, really important, and I've been lucky to have been surrounded by some of the best since the beginning of the game.

Maulkin

Satiar wrote: »

I don't know what you mean when you say "people used to blob less". Pain trains have been around since beta, theory crafted in alpha. There are only a few guilds left that still do it, as compared to the many that did. If anything it's less common now than before, because most people got bored/frustrated with the game and moved on.

Like, 1.5 the reason negating was so damn effective was that people typically stacked up HARD, both your group and the enemy.

I observe the opposite. Quite a few guilds quit/disbanded as the game performance nosedived, sure. But currently I see more "pain trains" then I did back then. With fewer active campaigns too. There are no campaigns without pain-trains any more, and there used to be a handful of them.

Also many guilds that used to run 5-6 people at best and didn't blob, have since doubled their numbers to cope with said pain trains. And as a result they blob more. Because it's effective.

Before people get defensive, I'm not accusing anyone of doing anything monstrous here. I'm just saying blobbing is currently too effective and more and more people blob as a result.

Zerging on the other hand is not effective, zergs get wiped by organised guilds all the time. It's just more effective than running solo/small-scale these days, escpecially if you are a new/casual/lower-skilled player. Because the solo/small-scale community took a massive hit by the changes I mentioned above.

Takllin

mike.gaziotisb16_ESO wrote: »

Satiar wrote: »

I don't know what you mean when you say "people used to blob less". Pain trains have been around since beta, theory crafted in alpha. There are only a few guilds left that still do it, as compared to the many that did. If anything it's less common now than before, because most people got bored/frustrated with the game and moved on.

Like, 1.5 the reason negating was so damn effective was that people typically stacked up HARD, both your group and the enemy.

I observe the opposite. Quite a few guilds quit/disbanded as the game performance nosedived, sure. But currently I see more "pain trains" then I did back then. With fewer active campaigns too. There are no campaigns without pain-trains any more, and there used to be a handful of them.

Also many guilds that used to run 5-6 people at best and didn't blob, have since doubled their numbers to cope with said pain trains. And as a result they blob more. Because it's effective.

Before people get defensive, I'm not accusing anyone of doing anything monstrous here. I'm just saying blobbing is currently too effective and more and more people blob as a result.

Zerging on the other hand is not effective, zergs get wiped by organised guilds all the time. It's just more effective than running solo/small-scale these days, escpecially if you are a new/casual/lower-skilled player. Because the solo/small-scale community took a massive hit by the changes I mentioned above.

I've noticed it as well, there are a ton more blobs than there used to be. The blob meta has spread a lot more because it's been like this for so long, people finally got tired of trying to fight it and joined it instead. Everything is a numbers game now, and it makes it hard as well given that it takes a lot more damage to kill someone, yet our resources and regen didn't go up proportionately to this.

jrkhan

@Satiar

I'm not sure what to tell you if you can't theory craft a way to take a keep against 2x your number of unorganized defenders using the proposed siege mechanic...

Maybe use your superior coordination to flag neighboring keeps before the 2x your number arrive?
Maybe try, not moving in a predictable pattern, so the siege has a harder time hitting you?
Maybe try, seiging with 6 and have the rest of your group cut off defenders at choke points?

Maybe move to an area of the keep where only 1 or 2 siege can hit you?

And those are just ways that don't involve actually changing group formation.

If these sorts of things don't help out, the defenders probably aren't potatoes... They shouldn't have to use the same tactic as you to beat you.

You describe a scenario 'attacking a keep with 2x your numbers defending' that if you were marginally creative, you could avoid in the first place.

This comes from experience taking keeps in bwb before 1.5, when 3 guys with siege could easily wipe stacked groups. Tactics like these were necessary.. Now groups like yours just barrel through anything that isn't another ball group.

Zheg

jrkhan wrote: »

@Satiar

I'm not sure what to tell you if you can't theory craft a way to take a keep against 2x your number of unorganized defenders using the proposed siege mechanic...

Maybe use your superior coordination to flag neighboring keeps before the 2x your number arrive?
Maybe try, not moving in a predictable pattern, so the siege has a harder time hitting you?
Maybe try, seiging with 6 and have the rest of your group cut off defenders at choke points?

Maybe move to an area of the keep where only 1 or 2 siege can hit you?

And those are just ways that don't involve actually changing group formation.

If these sorts of things don't help out, the defenders probably aren't potatoes... They shouldn't have to use the same tactic as you to beat you.

You describe a scenario 'attacking a keep with 2x your numbers defending' that if you were marginally creative, you could avoid in the first place.

This comes from experience taking keeps in bwb before 1.5, when 3 guys with siege could easily wipe stacked groups. Tactics like these were necessary.. Now groups like yours just barrel through anything that isn't another ball group.

And when there are no nearby keeps left and there's only one keep that makes sense to hit? Something so obvious even enemy pugs know to be there before a scout warns them? What then? Go hit drakelowe? Smart.

Or how about when there are two keeps left that make sense to hit? Stack with the other group/s hitting the other keep and Zerg it down? I'm sure everyone would love that. Or maybe go push the third alliance who is at 2 bars and down to their tri keeps so you can motivate the remaining pop to log?

Experienced groups who push well defended keeps with enemy siege already know how difficult it is for a single team to do. There are times when you literally can't NOT be hit by countersiege if you want to actually siege down a wall or door. Everyone who say 'just spread out' does so because they have little to zero experience actually pushing those tough well defended objectives and probably just zerg surf. Most of the time we push a heavily defended brk, it's just us. The proposals I've heard thus far are spread out (shows a clear lack of understanding of what those fights even look like), bring far more numbers (that'll help the performance...), or go push a useless undefended objective instead. All great ideas, keep em coming.

frozywozy

Zheg wrote: »

frozywozy wrote: »

Zheg wrote: »

zornyan wrote: »

Dear reds and yellows, now your 50 man zergs running into our keeps will be net with death, no longer will you stand there completly ignoring 2 or 3 of us firing siege into your midst, now you will die, or have to back off.

This sounds like a good change, gives small groups or individual players to hit hard and defend once more.

Sincerely

Blues

And that right there is the terribad mentality that has permeated these forums for months, and gives ZOS the impression that this is both healthy and desirable for pvp. In what world does it make sense for 2 or 3 people to left click a few times and wipe 50 people? All of the 'small groups' seem to want to be able to just sit off to the side in safety and click a few siege and see massive AP ticks scrolling on their screen. If you want AP, use your abilities and actually fight. If you can't kill them, they either outnumber you so significantly you're going to need to get reinforcements and try again, they're just better than you, or there are mechanic changes that wroebel needs to fix. Just because there are 2-3 people sitting alone in a keep and 50 people pour through a breach, that doesn't mean those 2-3 people should have any realistic chance of wiping them by left clicking once or twice. It's the effort/skill equivalent of running by yourself into a large group, light attacking, and expecting to kill them because prox det doesn't work so well when it's just you.

What you explained in this paragraph is the typical mentality of every single member part of a large 24men group has been praising in these entire 24pages. They want people to use player abilities, ballgroup strategies such as ulti dumbs, stacking on crown, mass barriers, purges and smart healing.

You're trying to convince ZOS that this game, which was promoted in the first place as a large siege warfare involving keep, outpost, ressource captures, that sieges should hit as much as a light attack and that it should not threaten your large ballgroup and incentive them to spread out at any point during a battle.

You're praising that your large group WILL stay stacked up no matter what happen because IF your large group must spread out, your leader will have a hard time controlling the ball, people are going to get picked up by players who have slotted single target abilities and everyone will panic and won't know what to do.

In reality, it is very easy to use the "spread out and reform" tactic in a ballgroup as I, Moon Die, Crystalized and probably several other leaders have done it in the past to avoid ulti dumbs and fake an attack on said group. In this case, it is just the same thing, except you do it to pick up siege operators until you reform again.

Do you know what happens when you give 2-3 people the ability to defend against 50 players with stupidly overpowered siege like so many people seem to want? Literally your entire faction can stack to push a single keep while 2-3 people defend your keeps behind you. If you stack that many people in one spot, the rest of your keeps should be easy pickings because you're dumb enough to stack that many and not defend objectives properly. Yeah, this scenario sounds great for 'stopping the ball groups and stopping the lag'.

If you think that 2-3people, even 15 can defend a keep against an organized group successfully with the changes (tweaked down a little bit) proposed and the advices given to guide organized groups into developping new strategies that we mentioned so many times in this thread already, you either need to read again, you are stubborn about your opinion or you simply don't understand the fact that the siege / purge changes proposed have the goal to SLOW DOWN the opposite forces to give time to reinforcements to ride back to the keep being attacked and offer a FAIR CHALLENGE WITH EQUAL NUMBERS.

Sorry, but tactically the best thing for small groups and individual players is to be on the transit lines stopping reinforcements. If they want to be at the keep defending, that's great, we need a few people there, but they should have zero expectations of being god-like and somehow wiping 20 times their number. Having a few people running solo putting up siege to target breaches/flags/whatever while organized defenders take on the attackers is always beneficial, even in today's meta. The problem arises when those few people think they should be able to wipe said attackers solely with siege. Almost no one criticizing these changes is saying that there shouldn't be any buffs at all to siege, the criticism has been that some of these changes are broken as eff and give far too much power for the dude on top of a random wall spamming left click.

The way you speak, it's like you think solo / small scale people have to pick between defending a keep or cutting the transit lines. In reality, it's the fact that when an organized group assaults a keep, usually, if they do it right, they assault a keep without proper defenses there if your scouts have done their job properly and that results obviously in smaller numbers defending said keep.

Stop making (poor) assumptions about other peoples thoughts. No, I don't think 2/3 people can wipe 50 with these changes, the comment was directed at other comments and a trending mentality that people think this should be a thing, and keep providing feedback to ZOS suggesting as much. In terms of broken to fine, oil catapult changes are mad broken as is simply because of how stam works, meatbag changes are dumb for (what should be) obvious reasons, and the rest of the siege buffs don't seem to be too OP and probably will be fine.

Dude, I have never said that you think 2/3 people can wipe 50. I've said word for word "If you think that 2-3people, even 15 can defend a keep against an organized group successfully" to your reply "Do you know what happens when you give 2-3 people the ability to defend against 50 players with stupidly overpowered siege like so many people seem to want?" You need to re-read that part.

You may want the new meta to be who has the numbers to drop more siege, but most of us don't find that appealing. Clicking left click every few seconds is even less engaging than spamming light attack in a fight, because at least then you can click every second. Much skill. Much fun.

I don't think the new meta should be who has the more numbers to drop more sieges. This is the typical argument that all large group players keep pointing out. And yet, we keep repeating that during a keep scenario, this is the attackers who have to push a breach, thereby, not being able to use sieges while pushing in. This give the advantage to defenders, if deployed properly and should make the blob think more carefuly. It is not about who has the more numbers to drop sieges. This mentality reffers to openfield battle which has no impact in the course of the campaign.

Brian can buff siege without adding broken mechanics like oil catas that will be in the game for months until the next release. All of these strong changes are happening at the same time as purge and barrier caps, the smart people know that we'll be stuck with any broken changes for months, since that seems to be lost on you, I can think of at least one inference to make.

This isn't about large groups, this is about overturned and poorly thought out changes. If the meta becomes spread and siege, large groups will do that and still wipe small groups - they'll just be doing so by left clicking every few seconds rather than having to actually use skills and move.

You do not have to tell me that this is about overturning and poorly designed new changes. I have been giving my opinion already way enough times in this thread, have been saying that the changes are probably too drastic and would need some tweaking.

And this is exactly why Brian Wheeler brought out this discussion, said that there would be PTS testing, and that those changes would be released only in months away from now. Which gives us enough time to discuss about possible solutions.

Saying this is bad because bad and bad doesn't change much. Saying this is bad because bad but this would be less bad is much better.

Teargrants

frozywozy wrote: »

Teargrants wrote: »

I'm going to be super cereal here, these posts are like watching a train wreck.

frozywozy wrote: »

2) Send vampire nightblades with cloak inside to assassinate people using sieges on the breach

Each word here makes this sentence progressively stupider.

- Relying on vamp NBs in a hotly contested siege, cuz camo hunter/oil/fire siege is fun?
- Cloaking into a breach???? THROUGH THE CALTROPS/MINES/RUNES/FEAR TRAPS/SIEGE HITS?!
- Assassinate them on their siege? So, I kill one guy and.....no one will rez him, when he's in his own keep? OK??

Back when my guild was more active (before people started leaving because of bad server performances), we had a dedicated scout group with specific roles and most of them were vampire nightblades. They were spec glass cannon, single target with high mobility and survivability. As soon as the breach would go down, their role was to push inside with immovable, maneuvers and mist form. As soon as they passed the breach, they would start cloaking all the way to single siege operator and focus target them one by one. In the case of the inner breach, they would go up on the catwalk and kill people dropping oils. This tactic was amazing and it was super effective. If I had the numbers, I would reintroduce that right away.

So, you're saying we should start a 2nd raid group for this? That's about the last thing we as a guild want - running multiple groups. All that aside, your 'glass gannon, single target, high mobility, high survivablility, doesn't exist as it did in 1.6. Mist form doesn't need to be tab targeted any more, you can't rolly polly roll forever anymore, you can't burst individual targets as fast anymore w/o sacrificing survivability, you can't force miss w/ Cloak when you're detected. And let's not even get into what the unpurgable siege will do to these guys trying to 'mist form through a breach'.

frozywozy wrote: »

I've never said that you were outnumbering people for the whole night. I've said that sometimes, you won't hesitate to jump on ones and twos with your whole group. This is what I have seen you guys doing on multiple occasions on tuesday evening.

Uh yeah, actually you did.

frozywozy wrote: »

you were constantly rushing ones and twos (me included) and you farmed lower numbers on the chalman mine for a while.

frozywozy wrote: »

The fact that you talk about me sitting on the flag with 20 EPs and you getting pushed by several reds during the evening doesn't change that at any point. It just prouves, once again, that you assume that I control the EP red armies, when in reality, I was soloing all by myself and wasn't ordering to my army of slaves any action against you.

Proves 'once again' that I think you control EP? I've been EP for over a year, why would I think such a stupid thing? I never said you led jack ***, I said you were there and thus know very well our group wasn't "farming lower numbers".

frozywozy

Teargrants wrote: »

frozywozy wrote: »

Teargrants wrote: »

I'm going to be super cereal here, these posts are like watching a train wreck.

frozywozy wrote: »

2) Send vampire nightblades with cloak inside to assassinate people using sieges on the breach

Each word here makes this sentence progressively stupider.

- Relying on vamp NBs in a hotly contested siege, cuz camo hunter/oil/fire siege is fun?
- Cloaking into a breach???? THROUGH THE CALTROPS/MINES/RUNES/FEAR TRAPS/SIEGE HITS?!
- Assassinate them on their siege? So, I kill one guy and.....no one will rez him, when he's in his own keep? OK??

Back when my guild was more active (before people started leaving because of bad server performances), we had a dedicated scout group with specific roles and most of them were vampire nightblades. They were spec glass cannon, single target with high mobility and survivability. As soon as the breach would go down, their role was to push inside with immovable, maneuvers and mist form. As soon as they passed the breach, they would start cloaking all the way to single siege operator and focus target them one by one. In the case of the inner breach, they would go up on the catwalk and kill people dropping oils. This tactic was amazing and it was super effective. If I had the numbers, I would reintroduce that right away.

So, you're saying we should start a 2nd raid group for this? That's about the last thing we as a guild want - running multiple groups. All that aside, your 'glass gannon, single target, high mobility, high survivablility, doesn't exist as it did in 1.6. Mist form doesn't need to be tab targeted any more, you can't rolly polly roll forever anymore, you can't burst individual targets as fast anymore w/o sacrificing survivability, you can't force miss w/ Cloak when you're detected. And let's not even get into what the unpurgable siege will do to these guys trying to 'mist form through a breach'.

Have you ever watched Lowpolicy and Aenir play together against a 25men group? They can easily make their way through all of them, focus kill targets and manage to run away from them easily. Plus, one of them doesn't even relay on cloaking since he's a dragonknight.

I have done it myself several times when an inner breach goes down. With a 3.2k stam regen / 3k weapon power, using maneuvers, shuffle, hardened armor, vigor, rally and immo pots, I can easily get inside an inner breach and dodge roll / use LoS to scout a keep before my group goes in and see exactly what's going on inside. I understand that mist form doesn't require tab target anymore but if the nightblade altern between mist forming (when passing the breach) and then cloaking to get to his target, it is doable without a doubt.

Also, I'm not suggesting that you add another group. This is how I used to roll back in the days but you can easily assign a couple players in your actual group with that role. But at this point, I think you're trying to find reasons more than anything. Plus, the subject is getting a little bit out of the track so I'll just let it go.

jrkhan

Zheg wrote: »

jrkhan wrote: »

@Satiar

I'm not sure what to tell you if you can't theory craft a way to take a keep against 2x your number of unorganized defenders using the proposed siege mechanic...

Maybe use your superior coordination to flag neighboring keeps before the 2x your number arrive?
Maybe try, not moving in a predictable pattern, so the siege has a harder time hitting you?
Maybe try, seiging with 6 and have the rest of your group cut off defenders at choke points?

Maybe move to an area of the keep where only 1 or 2 siege can hit you?

And those are just ways that don't involve actually changing group formation.

If these sorts of things don't help out, the defenders probably aren't potatoes... They shouldn't have to use the same tactic as you to beat you.

You describe a scenario 'attacking a keep with 2x your numbers defending' that if you were marginally creative, you could avoid in the first place.

This comes from experience taking keeps in bwb before 1.5, when 3 guys with siege could easily wipe stacked groups. Tactics like these were necessary.. Now groups like yours just barrel through anything that isn't another ball group.

And when there are no nearby keeps left and there's only one keep that makes sense to hit? Something so obvious even enemy pugs know to be there before a scout warns them? What then? Go hit drakelowe? Smart.

Or how about when there are two keeps left that make sense to hit? Stack with the other group/s hitting the other keep and Zerg it down? I'm sure everyone would love that. Or maybe go push the third alliance who is at 2 bars and down to their tri keeps so you can motivate the remaining pop to log?

Experienced groups who push well defended keeps with enemy siege already know how difficult it is for a single team to do. There are times when you literally can't NOT be hit by countersiege if you want to actually siege down a wall or door. Everyone who say 'just spread out' does so because they have little to zero experience actually pushing those tough well defended objectives and probably just zerg surf. Most of the time we push a heavily defended brk, it's just us. The proposals I've heard thus far are spread out (shows a clear lack of understanding of what those fights even look like), bring far more numbers (that'll help the performance...), or go push a useless undefended objective instead. All great ideas, keep em coming.

When there are no nearby keeps left, things do get interesting.
Brk is not an example of this as first flagging or taking arrius is certainly helpful.

Note:
None of the suggestions you quoted in my post involved either spreading out, changing to worthless objectives, or bringing more people.
(I'm counting having a 2 -3 person scouting/flagging group as something significantly different than 'spreading out')

So, for arguments sake, let's say brk is the last emp keep,you've already taken Arrius, and it's just your group against the entire red faction (AD has logged for the night)

Assuming you are fighting pugs:
If you choose to hit a target that your enemy is already actively defending, 'convince them you are weak when you are not'
Unorganized pugs will venture out of the keep if you aren't actively attacking it.
Then have a few people flag the keep, reconsolidate, wipe them open field.

Or if they really won't leave the keep and they have more patience then you? (At which point they are more disciplined than you)

Quickly switch sides, placing troll siege as you go, settle in a relatively defensible spot, and whittle away at it.

There are more strategies than these - but let's see you specifically talk about these first.

I've been taking keeps with experienced groups for a year and a half now.
There is no time where you are forced to eat siege damage.
If you are taking heavy siege you are doing it wrong.
There are times when group leaders make the call to do so anyway, because the current mechanics make it far easier than it should be to do, but don't pretend that's the only option.

If you are not accustomed to needing to use strategies like this, you've been coddled too long. The game can be played in other, more strategic, ways.