[BUG] PURGE ALWAYS HITTING SAME SIX

Akgurd

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/279616/pc-mac-patch-notes-v2-4-11


Another week without purge fix and still no response! Thanks ZOS!

@ZOS_GinaBruno
@ZOS_JessicaFolsom
@ZOS_BrianWheeler
@Wrobel

_Chaos

Akgurd wrote: »

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/279616/pc-mac-patch-notes-v2-4-11


Another week without purge fix and still no response! Thanks ZOS!

@ZOS_GinaBruno
@ZOS_JessicaFolsom
@ZOS_BrianWheeler
@Wrobel

svartorn

Akgurd wrote: »

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/279616/pc-mac-patch-notes-v2-4-11


Another week without purge fix and still no response! Thanks ZOS!

@ZOS_GinaBruno
@ZOS_JessicaFolsom
@ZOS_BrianWheeler
@Wrobel

You're doing the lord's work, AK! I wish this would get resolved, or at the very least an acknowledgement.

MLRPZ

It has been aknowledged, that's the sadest part ...

still no ETA

Master_Kas

This is now officially a feature, like the nerfed movement speed .

Flake

Akgurd wrote: »

Another week without purge fix and still no response! Thanks ZOS!

@ZOS_GinaBruno
@ZOS_JessicaFolsom
@ZOS_BrianWheeler
@Wrobel

I think we like the new change. You can now kill your 24 man No more 50% RAM Templars spamming purge... yay

diamanda

Очередной вторник прошел изменений нет ...

Satiar

Flake wrote: »

Akgurd wrote: »

Another week without purge fix and still no response! Thanks ZOS!

@ZOS_GinaBruno
@ZOS_JessicaFolsom
@ZOS_BrianWheeler
@Wrobel

I think we like the new change. You can now kill your 24 man No more 50% RAM Templars spamming purge... yay

All it took for you to win was a crippling bug, much applause. Truly, a great victory!

ataggs

Do you do anything but meme?

Flake

ataggs wrote: »

Do you do anything but meme?

But in all seriousness, comments from your buddy are uncalled for when you don't understand the relationship between the two guilds.

My comment was in no disrespect to RAM or Ak nor to take away the point of this thread. But when we fight each other nightly and are in tells, it's fun to poke [snip] once and awhile. Surely you can understand champ?

Akgurd

Please keep this civil and constructive.

IMO, every PvP guild or player should adjust/counter to whatever the changes made to the game regardless of its being a bug or not. That being said, I'm fine with RAM being seen as weaker. We will struggle through it and make it happen with effort to change ourselves.

But hey, I don't mind ZOS giving us our beloved purge back

ataggs

Sorry, Steve is a friend, one of the best raid leads of one of the best guilds and your meme was offensive.

Flake

Akgurd wrote: »

Please keep this civil and constructive.

IMO, every PvP guild or player should adjust/counter to whatever the changes made to the game regardless of its being a bug or not. That being said, I'm fine with RAM being seen as weaker. We will struggle through it and make it happen with effort to change ourselves.

But hey, I don't mind ZOS giving us our beloved purge back

Aww Ak why come in an spoil everything

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO

@ZOS_GinaBruno @ZOS_JessicaFolsom @Wrobel @ZOS_KaiSchober @ZOS_BrianWheeler

Still bugged... Tested tonight on live.

Along with the 'Oils giving a huge healing debuff' bug / undocumented feature.

ZOS_GinaBruno

The issue with Purge is currently scheduled to be hotfixed later this week.

Akgurd

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

The issue with Purge is currently scheduled to be hotfixed later this week.

Yaaaaaaaaay!

maxjapank

Akgurd wrote: »

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

The issue with Purge is currently scheduled to be hotfixed later this week.

Yaaaaaaaaay!

Noooooo. RAM will be unstoppable. We will have to try 5 cold fire ballistas in the face now.

heystreethawk

In case people haven't seen it yet:

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/282498/maintenance-for-all-eso-megaservers-8-3-16-3am-edt

after the hotfix, the effects from Purge will apply to all group members that have a negative effect on them.

Which I gather to mean that Purge will go back to hitting a full group, or as many people within that group who are applicable for the nourishing & revitalizing Purge effects? @ZOS_GinaBruno @ZOS_BrianWheeler is that an accurate reading of the incoming fix?

That might sound like I'm just putting a question mark at the end of the quoted text, but since it's an extremely substantial (and in my mind, totally justified) change/revert targeted at the essential flow of combat, I wanted to make sure that's the plan and that I'm not misreading the note; maybe Gina's intention with the note was more along the lines of "the effects from Purge will apply to any six group members that have a negative effect on them, instead of limiting those effects to the first six people to have joined the group". I DON'T WANT TO GET MY HOPES UP IS WHAT I AM SAYING D :

(I believe that the barrier changes were healthy for the game and led to more satisfying gameplay, and while I don't like the changes to Rapids, that's something which I can internalize as a "frustrating improvement", a "good of the many" type of thing. However, considering the ease of applying numerous negative effects to enemy combatants-- many skills doing so with a cost-effective AoE delivery system-- in addition to the lack of a cooldown/immunity relating to negative effects, I feel that the purge limitations only served to trivialize the strategic elements of combat. Do you have more snares than the enemy? Do you have more healing debuffs? Do you have more people devoted exclusively to spamming a Support ability? which is a pretty tedious layer of strategy that I think demonstrates how the purge change, for all its presumed good intention, once again served to benefit groups with greater numbers.)

frozywozy

I personally think and HOPE the purge changes won't be reverted. I could see a purge prioritization of siege debuffs being a thing though. No reason to go back to Purge hitting a full 24men ball group with 3-4 dedicated purge spammers who entirely negate the siege effects as the train rolls inside an enemy keep inner breach in full forces. No thanks.

Ghost-Shot

frozywozy wrote: »

I personally think and HOPE the purge changes won't be reverted. I could see a purge prioritization of siege debuffs being a thing though. No reason to go back to Purge hitting a full 24men ball group with 3-4 dedicated purge spammers who entirely negate the siege effects as the train rolls inside an enemy keep inner breach in full forces. No thanks.

If you can aoe debuff that whole group without even using an ability they should be able to purge everyone.

frozywozy

Ghost-Shot wrote: »

frozywozy wrote: »

I personally think and HOPE the purge changes won't be reverted. I could see a purge prioritization of siege debuffs being a thing though. No reason to go back to Purge hitting a full 24men ball group with 3-4 dedicated purge spammers who entirely negate the siege effects as the train rolls inside an enemy keep inner breach in full forces. No thanks.

If you can aoe debuff that whole group without even using an ability they should be able to purge everyone.

Let's compare one player using a siege to one player spamming purge affecting his whole 24men ballgroup.

Player using siege

- Deploying a siege and using it put you in a vulnerable state and takes a few seconds to process
- Must fire at the right angle and predict the direction of the ballgroup
- Must wait for the reload time to fire again
- Can only be used on flat surfaces and not too close to other sieges

Player spamming purge

- Purge, especially efficient purge, can be used by any magicka build (very cheap)
- Can be spammed once every global cooldown entirely negating any incoming debuffs
- Can be used anytime anywhere, only require you to follow your big papacrown (exception : negate)
- When being used, keep you entirely safe from anything as long as you keep following your big papacrown and are in range of heals and other buffs affecting your skilled and experienced 24men ballgroup

Ghost-Shot

frozywozy wrote: »

Ghost-Shot wrote: »

frozywozy wrote: »

I personally think and HOPE the purge changes won't be reverted. I could see a purge prioritization of siege debuffs being a thing though. No reason to go back to Purge hitting a full 24men ball group with 3-4 dedicated purge spammers who entirely negate the siege effects as the train rolls inside an enemy keep inner breach in full forces. No thanks.

If you can aoe debuff that whole group without even using an ability they should be able to purge everyone.

Let's compare one player using a siege to one player spamming purge affecting his whole 24men ballgroup.

Player using siege

- Deploying a siege and using it put you in a vulnerable state and takes a few seconds to process
- Must fire at the right angle and predict the direction of the ballgroup
- Must wait for the reload time to fire again
- Can only be used on flat surfaces and not too close to other sieges

Player spamming purge

- Purge, especially efficient purge, can be used by any magicka build (very cheap)
- Can be spammed once every global cooldown entirely negating any incoming debuffs
- Can be used anytime anywhere, only require you to follow your big papacrown (exception : negate)
- When being used, keep you entirely safe from anything as long as you keep following your big papacrown and are in range of heals and other buffs affecting your skilled and experienced 24men ballgroup

Frozn, as always your methods of over complicating one thing an over simplifying another to fit your incoherent arguments are highly amusing. I actually wasn't even thinking about siege, more so things like Fasallas that require 0 player skill to cut someones healing in half but you bring up a good point.

First thing I want address is something you should probably use in the future when preaching your group hate, Extermanatus is far superior for tracking crown movement than papa crown. Papa crown can be ok to pick the crown out in a faction event but at that point it really doesn't matter.

Second, please don't try to spin operating siege as being skilled game play in any way what so ever, it is literally the easiest thing you can do in this game, 3 weeks ago I solo, (yes I mean solo, there was one afk EP in the keep with me) defended Faregyl against a group of 15 AD with 4 oil pots, meteor, viscous death and valkyn skoria. This was not skilled play, it was abusing one of the most broken things in the game and taking advantage of the fact that no matter how bad they wanted to, they could purge less than half their group. D-Tick was real af though.

Third, the only time I have ever seen a group of actual skilled players have someone's main job be purging was when the Meritorious Service set came out so they could keep max up time on the buff for as many people as possible. ONE player in the group would spam purge and siege shields to buff the group, that did not mean everyone else all of a sudden didn't need to purge through the breach. Every single magicka build in a good group slots purge. This is not exclusive to the "ball groups" you love so much, its what you do if you play with more than a few people and want to play effectively as a team.

If you are doing nothing but spamming purge, you are only safe from the baddies on siege, that 7k weapon damage night blade running around looking for juicy targets (*cough* @xANTIxMATTERx *cough*) will blow your *** up in a hurry.

frozywozy

Ghost-Shot wrote: »

frozywozy wrote: »

Ghost-Shot wrote: »

frozywozy wrote: »

I personally think and HOPE the purge changes won't be reverted. I could see a purge prioritization of siege debuffs being a thing though. No reason to go back to Purge hitting a full 24men ball group with 3-4 dedicated purge spammers who entirely negate the siege effects as the train rolls inside an enemy keep inner breach in full forces. No thanks.

If you can aoe debuff that whole group without even using an ability they should be able to purge everyone.

Let's compare one player using a siege to one player spamming purge affecting his whole 24men ballgroup.

Player using siege

- Deploying a siege and using it put you in a vulnerable state and takes a few seconds to process
- Must fire at the right angle and predict the direction of the ballgroup
- Must wait for the reload time to fire again
- Can only be used on flat surfaces and not too close to other sieges

Player spamming purge

- Purge, especially efficient purge, can be used by any magicka build (very cheap)
- Can be spammed once every global cooldown entirely negating any incoming debuffs
- Can be used anytime anywhere, only require you to follow your big papacrown (exception : negate)
- When being used, keep you entirely safe from anything as long as you keep following your big papacrown and are in range of heals and other buffs affecting your skilled and experienced 24men ballgroup

Frozn, as always your methods of over complicating one thing an over simplifying another to fit your incoherent arguments are highly amusing. I actually wasn't even thinking about siege, more so things like Fasallas that require 0 player skill to cut someones healing in half but you bring up a good point.

First thing I want address is something you should probably use in the future when preaching your group hate, Extermanatus is far superior for tracking crown movement than papa crown. Papa crown can be ok to pick the crown out in a faction event but at that point it really doesn't matter.

Second, please don't try to spin operating siege as being skilled game play in any way what so ever, it is literally the easiest thing you can do in this game, 3 weeks ago I solo, (yes I mean solo, there was one afk EP in the keep with me) defended Faregyl against a group of 15 AD with 4 oil pots, meteor, viscous death and valkyn skoria. This was not skilled play, it was abusing one of the most broken things in the game and taking advantage of the fact that no matter how bad they wanted to, they could purge less than half their group. D-Tick was real af though.

Third, the only time I have ever seen a group of actual skilled players have someone's main job be purging was when the Meritorious Service set came out so they could keep max up time on the buff for as many people as possible. ONE player in the group would spam purge and siege shields to buff the group, that did not mean everyone else all of a sudden didn't need to purge through the breach. Every single magicka build in a good group slots purge. This is not exclusive to the "ball groups" you love so much, its what you do if you play with more than a few people and want to play effectively as a team.

If you are doing nothing but spamming purge, you are only safe from the baddies on siege, that 7k weapon damage night blade running around looking for juicy targets (*cough* @xANTIxMATTERx *cough*) will blow your *** up in a hurry.

You said that if one player can AOE debuff an entire group, one player should be able to instantly purge the whole group. I gave you a comparaison of one person using, in my opinion, the strongest debuffs in the game (sieges) with one person spamming purges in his 24men ballgroup. I am not sure what is "complicated" and "simplified" in what I just said. Yes Fasalla is annoying to deal with but it doesn't mean that because Fasalla was brought in the game, the purge system should go back to where it used to be and entirely negate any siege debuff.

Then you bring me a specific scenario of you killing a group of players with your siege and declare that sieges require no skills to use. We both know the difference between wiping a group of pugs who don't know how to play and a 24men ballgroup spamming purges and barriers like the old meta used to be. You call me out for trying to simplify stuff but this is exactly what you did here.

Any player dedicated to use a siege in a medium group while his group is in constant movement puts himself into a vulnerable position and can be wrecked instantly if his group gets too far away. So it does require a minimum of skills to use. In any case, the point was not to prouve that using sieges is skillful but to compare it to someone spamming purges.

I'm not sure to understand your point in the third paragraph. I never disagreed that having purge slot is a bad thing to do. I use purge and when I run a medium group on wednesday, I make sure that we have 3-4 purgers. My point, as mentioned in my first post, was that if we go back to the old purge meta, having 3-4 players strickly spamming purges as the group roll inside the breach while some healers precast mutagen/rapid regen and healing spring, the group will go right inside the breach through a ton of sieges and oils without any problem and we will go back to the old meta of invincible ballgroups.

Ghost-Shot

frozywozy wrote: »

Ghost-Shot wrote: »

frozywozy wrote: »

Ghost-Shot wrote: »

frozywozy wrote: »

I personally think and HOPE the purge changes won't be reverted. I could see a purge prioritization of siege debuffs being a thing though. No reason to go back to Purge hitting a full 24men ball group with 3-4 dedicated purge spammers who entirely negate the siege effects as the train rolls inside an enemy keep inner breach in full forces. No thanks.

If you can aoe debuff that whole group without even using an ability they should be able to purge everyone.

Let's compare one player using a siege to one player spamming purge affecting his whole 24men ballgroup.

Player using siege

- Deploying a siege and using it put you in a vulnerable state and takes a few seconds to process
- Must fire at the right angle and predict the direction of the ballgroup
- Must wait for the reload time to fire again
- Can only be used on flat surfaces and not too close to other sieges

Player spamming purge

- Purge, especially efficient purge, can be used by any magicka build (very cheap)
- Can be spammed once every global cooldown entirely negating any incoming debuffs
- Can be used anytime anywhere, only require you to follow your big papacrown (exception : negate)
- When being used, keep you entirely safe from anything as long as you keep following your big papacrown and are in range of heals and other buffs affecting your skilled and experienced 24men ballgroup

Frozn, as always your methods of over complicating one thing an over simplifying another to fit your incoherent arguments are highly amusing. I actually wasn't even thinking about siege, more so things like Fasallas that require 0 player skill to cut someones healing in half but you bring up a good point.

First thing I want address is something you should probably use in the future when preaching your group hate, Extermanatus is far superior for tracking crown movement than papa crown. Papa crown can be ok to pick the crown out in a faction event but at that point it really doesn't matter.

Second, please don't try to spin operating siege as being skilled game play in any way what so ever, it is literally the easiest thing you can do in this game, 3 weeks ago I solo, (yes I mean solo, there was one afk EP in the keep with me) defended Faregyl against a group of 15 AD with 4 oil pots, meteor, viscous death and valkyn skoria. This was not skilled play, it was abusing one of the most broken things in the game and taking advantage of the fact that no matter how bad they wanted to, they could purge less than half their group. D-Tick was real af though.

Third, the only time I have ever seen a group of actual skilled players have someone's main job be purging was when the Meritorious Service set came out so they could keep max up time on the buff for as many people as possible. ONE player in the group would spam purge and siege shields to buff the group, that did not mean everyone else all of a sudden didn't need to purge through the breach. Every single magicka build in a good group slots purge. This is not exclusive to the "ball groups" you love so much, its what you do if you play with more than a few people and want to play effectively as a team.

If you are doing nothing but spamming purge, you are only safe from the baddies on siege, that 7k weapon damage night blade running around looking for juicy targets (*cough* @xANTIxMATTERx *cough*) will blow your *** up in a hurry.

You said that if one player can AOE debuff an entire group, one player should be able to instantly purge the whole group. I gave you a comparaison of one person using, in my opinion, the strongest debuffs in the game (sieges) with one person spamming purges in his 24men ballgroup. I am not sure what is "complicated" and "simplified" in what I just said. Yes Fasalla is annoying to deal with but it doesn't mean that because Fasalla was brought in the game, the purge system should go back to where it used to be and entirely negate any siege debuff.

Then you bring me a specific scenario of you killing a group of players with your siege and declare that sieges require no skills to use. We both know the difference between wiping a group of pugs who don't know how to play and a 24men ballgroup spamming purges and barriers like the old meta used to be. You call me out for trying to simplify stuff but this is exactly what you did here.

Any player dedicated to use a siege in a medium group while his group is in constant movement puts himself into a vulnerable position and can be wrecked instantly if his group gets too far away. So it does require a minimum of skills to use. In any case, the point was not to prouve that using sieges is skillful but to compare it to someone spamming purges.

I'm not sure to understand your point in the third paragraph. I never disagreed that having purge slot is a bad thing to do. I use purge and when I run a medium group on wednesday, I make sure that we have 3-4 purgers. My point, as mentioned in my first post, was that if we go back to the old purge meta, having 3-4 players strickly spamming purges as the group roll inside the breach while some healers precast mutagen/rapid regen and healing spring, the group will go right inside the breach through a ton of sieges and oils without any problem and we will go back to the old meta of invincible ballgroups.

Everyone is welcome to their opinions but I honestly believe that Fasallas is a much more concerning debuff than siege because the only really concerning part of siege to me is the initial hit damage from cold fire siege, but there is no sense in arguing that point as it will really get us no where. My point in the third part was that in a good group you don't need 3-4 dedicated purgers because every magicka build in the gorup runs purge and knows when they need to purge. You said that part of the "difficulty" of being a dedicated sieger is predicting the angle to fire, the place where it is the most concerning in a breach which requires no thought for where to fire.

Reverting purge makes things fair, if one person can with one click hit an entire group for 15k plus a 5k per second dot and debuff the entire group then one person should be able to cleanse the entire group. You will never see the old group meta return, barrier and rapids played far more into that meta than purge.

heystreethawk

frozywozy wrote: »

Ghost-Shot wrote: »

frozywozy wrote: »

I personally think and HOPE the purge changes won't be reverted. I could see a purge prioritization of siege debuffs being a thing though. No reason to go back to Purge hitting a full 24men ball group with 3-4 dedicated purge spammers who entirely negate the siege effects as the train rolls inside an enemy keep inner breach in full forces. No thanks.

If you can aoe debuff that whole group without even using an ability they should be able to purge everyone.

Let's compare one player using a siege to one player spamming purge affecting his whole 24men ballgroup.

Player using siege

- Deploying a siege and using it put you in a vulnerable state and takes a few seconds to process
- Must fire at the right angle and predict the direction of the ballgroup
- Must wait for the reload time to fire again
- Can only be used on flat surfaces and not too close to other sieges

Player spamming purge

- Purge, especially efficient purge, can be used by any magicka build (very cheap)
- Can be spammed once every global cooldown entirely negating any incoming debuffs
- Can be used anytime anywhere, only require you to follow your big papacrown (exception : negate)
- When being used, keep you entirely safe from anything as long as you keep following your big papacrown and are in range of heals and other buffs affecting your skilled and experienced 24men ballgroup

I follow the logic here, and I wouldn't suggest that reverting Purge is a no-brainer that doesn't carry with it a deadly showdown of Pros vs. Cons, but with each of these different points I think we should consider a few different scenarios. Different pairings of group sizes and different locations play a part in the validity of each of these notions, and we should consider the advantages and disadvantages of the builds that we most commonly see in the different group sizes. Unfortunately, this is going to take forever, and I will probably only cover a single scenario. I'll embed it in spoiler tags. Respectfully, it is a lot more complicated than your bullet points suggest.

Deploying a siege and using it put you in a vulnerable state and takes a few seconds to process

Small (4-10) Group vs. Medium Group (10-16)

Let's start with this kind of matchup, because there are more of these two sizes of groups running around than any other size, at least on PC/NA/Trueflame/The Internet. My own group falls into the middle-chunk to large-end of Medium the vast majority of the time, and we spend about 60-90 minutes of our designated raid nights in the Large group tax bracket. There are not many "ball groups" in the game anymore, let alone those that routinely run 24 players deep, though I suspect the phrase at hand to be an umbrella-toting boogeyman anyway. However, we will assume that the Medium group here has been called a "ball group" at some point in their lives, just as I will tangentially assume enemy combatants label my team the phrase with some frequency. If the M group has 14-16 people, they are probably being called a "ball group" right now, at the outset of our scenario.

Some tactical groundwork to set the stage!

Small groups rely on spreading out enemies and whittling down their ranks (a "focus target" approach, targeting support roles and healers first, once those targets are isolated) before converging on the enemy group at a vulnerable moment. They rely on a spread formation themselves, and the builds you see in Small groups place a much greater emphasis on individual mobility (e.g. not relying on the Rapids or Purges of other players), which allows them to remain spread without becoming nearly as vulnerable as Medium groups do in that circumstance-- the M group can't spread out so much that they are unable to converge when they need to, and they are not able to converge as easily as the S group, because they are designed to fight other M groups, as well as Large groups and Zergs. Small groups tend to be more stam-heavy, because of the mobility and single-target damage potential stam builds have to offer.

M groups equip the skills best suited for fighting M, L, and Z, and since they have a larger size compared to S groups, they can assign group mobility and support abilities to certain players, allowing individuals to equip abilities which make it easier to fight Large groups and Zergs, and this usually affords players within their group more wiggle room to spec outright into damage, which they need to tackle the bigger fish. M groups are as a result more magicka-heavy, because that allows them increased ability to combat L and Z, and the capacity for more dedicated healers/support patrolmen to withstand fights against the bigger crews.

In contrast, we remember Small group builds are designed with much more emphasis on mobility, tankiness, and sustain (you yourself exhibit terrific levels of all 3 on your Templar), because they need those attribute to fight larger groups of lesser or comparable skill. But at a certain size disparity (which is highly dependent upon the skill of each group), Small groups don't really stand a chance against Large groups or Zergs, so they're not going to bother with the chunk-busting spec favored by M. They're instead built to fight individual players, other Smalls, most Mediums, and the small end of extremely chumpy Large-os inclined to follow dangling carrots and caught on tape never even noticing that a conspicuous moving shrub has a pair of humanoid legs poking out of it.

We should also note that Medium groups still exhibit the "focus target" mindset and capacity for an easy spread/converge at the smaller end of their size spectrum, but not nearly as much as Small groups; it's the tradeoff for the M group's capacity to battle L and Z in service of their monarch of choice. Unless an M group's sole purpose in life is to hunt down and murder tiny squads of enemy players, which would be truly sad and ridiculous, players in M groups just don't have the loadout to constantly escape or withstand large amounts of individual, focused pressure (unless they're K-Hole in their prime, or Haxus when they have the numbers online to push into M-class).

In terms of overlapping tactics and strengths, S&M groups are both on the prowl for opportunities to whip the opposing side when that opposition is tied up closely together, and they're both constantly re-evaluating the merits of keeping their group in close proximity to one another against the vulnerabilities which that proximity entails. However, S groups maintain a significantly greater advantage when they're spread, compared to M groups, and they can stay spread out longer without putting themselves at a comparable level of risk. Both groups are paying extremely close attention to the changing variables of the fight at hand (combat awareness), with that awareness diminishing (but not by any means fading into irrelevance) at the larger end of the size spectrum for both groups.

So, uh, only now can we look at how the situation might play out for either side, with regard to the placement of siege making you vulnerable. The idea that setting down siege will make the Small group more vulnerable is a pretty self-contained idea, pretty straightforward, and it's implicitly suggested within your bullet point, so what I'll take the time to do here is whip up an examination that teases out the vulnerabilities which the Medium group faces when faced with that siege. Devil's advocate type of thing.

In open field, let's assume the M group in this scenario is generally positioned toward the spread out S group, although S group is circling around to position themselves more at an angle to the M group-- objective of S being at the moment to kite or flank M, or at the very least, to re-position M in such a way that leaves M's collective back to the siege. S group's siege is angled somewhat to the left or right of the M group (closer to the general spread out location of the remainder of S), or the siege is outright flanking M already. The Medium group is unlikely to rush the player(s) on siege in unison, or split off neatly in a direct and telegraphed fashion, because that would leave their group (whether it's the whole group or the group-split-neatly-in-twain) vulnerable to a bomb which they have a smaller chance of escaping compared to the substantial exiting capacities of the Small group.

Even if M is a confident cat (the Royal Cat, you know, the collective group of a Cat) who believes they have the ability to move quickly in unison to both take out the siege and re-position themselves to some advantage over S (who are already in the process of acquiring a positional advantage over M) without getting snaggled, M rushing that siege as a group or half-O-group would cripple their combat awareness; M would lose the ability to keep tabs on the rest of the S group, and they'd have a diminished capacity to watch for other groups/solo artists arriving from whatever spawn point is in vicinity. I mean, we know fights don't stay isolated from outside parties for long, at least on TF, unless the skirmish been pre-determined and scheduled in a calendar.

Anyhoo. If the M group changes direction and pushes to the siege (which we can surmise is located far enough away from the current position of the M group to necessitate a substantial change of direction on their behalf), the rest of the S group (who we can assume are spread out a shorter distance away from the siege than M) is able to spot that change in movement, converge on the M group, trap them in a Negate / bed of farm fresh Caltrops / whatever else, and drop bombs. With siege still focused on the M group, getting stuck in a Negate for just a couple of seconds is a death sentence. No purges, no heals, and there's damage coming in besides the siege.

It's worth noting that I love that this vulnerability exists; numbers matter less than they are presumed to, or maybe they just matter in a different way, and everything else matters more than we think.

The S group wouldn't get stuck in a negate; they rarely get stuck. Homeboys in S are not comparably vulnerable to Negates for a variety of reasons, and hey, it's pretty cool when this game hints at the existence of balance and tradeoffs of that nature. S has enough to worry about, anyway. I don't think the M group will charge toward the siege as a group, unless the M group is bad. If the M group is bad, they deserve to be caught by the siege bait, and they deserve to be wiped by smaller numbers, because I agree that skill should always triumph. I think bad players agree with that too, but they just don't realize that they're bad.

Other primary option now! If Posse Medium dedicates a person or two to split off and take care of the siege (bearing in mind that the M group does need to be wary of losing a player or two, albeit not as much as the S group), that person on siege will either move away from their siege once they identify the threat (Small group builds being crafted with individual sustain and individual mobility in mind, and chances being high that said build is stamina-flavored, Doctor Siege is very unlikely to be pinned in place by 1-3 players), possibly they will kite the M players away from the rest their group (diminishing the strength of M as they engage the remainder of S), or they will remain in proximity to their siege and fight the players from M who have split off to engage them.

Recalling that S group builds are inclined more toward single target damage, mobility, and endurance under pressure (in short: 1vX), M's choice to split up their not-gargantuan group in order to engage the siege line (if it's 1 person, I should call it a siege dot) has placed the player from S entirely in their element; depending on the skill and build of the player(s) engaging Doctor Siege, the Doc might even have the advantage. Don't get me wrong: Unless the M players at hand are actually very bad (shame on you, M! You deserve to get wiped), Doctor Siege will not be able to defeat the player(s) engaging them at the siege dot without a good opening -- but the Doctor is a patient individual, having made it through medical school at the surprise of his or her cynical parents, and he or she will wait for their foes to exhibit vulnerability.

Even if Dr. S winds up entirely unable to land a single kill, they are probably still alive, and they have managed to isolate / distract 10-20+% of the enemy team; it's possible this would give S the ability to push and wipe M right now, depending on the size disparity between the two groups. The fight could be over very soon. But if S doesn't have that chance yet, the players engaging Dr. S have relinquished their combat awareness of the remainder of the S group, who might be presented with a golden opportunity to converge back on the siege dot for an easy takedown of the M players at hand. In some cases, this would leave S with a terrific window to wipe the remainder of M. If that opportunity has still yet to arrive, S can position themselves to make it unlikely for M to succeed in a battle res, and begin to dictate the terms of the fight. If M sends someone off to set up a camp, in lieu of going for the terrible res bait, S will have managed to split M up even more; camp dude might even die en route to the intended position of the camp. We won't get into a full blown camp scenario though, because I do hate them, and it would take more forever to talk about.

Hey, we haven't even gotten to talk about purges yet! Because Purges are not going to make a difference in the scenario thus far. It doesn't really matter if M's purges hit 6 or 12 or 16 here, because somewhere in the ballpark of 50-65% of the factors determining the outcome of Group on Group Action are determined in the very brief eternity wherein the groups are jockeying for a position-based advantage. The outnumbered group has to work harder to gain that advantage, and must seize the opportunity with more speed and ferocity; however, their hard work is not going to be chucked into the garbage once the swords hit the fan simply because their enemies have functional Purges which hit the entirety of their players at once. It's just not going to be the determining factor.

Some examples of why Purge isn't going to make siege irrelevant, a shocking twist about the situations where siege does make it impossible to win a fight (which barely concerns Purge, to be honest), and then I take you out to lunch.

If the M group charges at the siege as a group, they get bombed and CC'ed and hopefully negated. There will be enough damage in the house for S to get some kills in, and if S cannot finish M right there, they can re-position themselves before a counter-bomb from the weakened, diminished M group arrives. M can't purge the incoming damage, they can't purge a hard CC, they can't purge during a negate. They can purge right afterward, but the initial burst damage from the siege is substantial, and combined with a bomb from the portion of the S team who is not just clicking on the ground, the burst damage should be enough to get a happy number of kills, if not a full wipe.

The DoT from the siege will tick at least once more before the M team can break free-- you know that bomb had a Leap or a Dawnbreaker or a Meteor or a Tether or all four at once-- and purge off the siege, regardless of how many people the Purge hits. If there's a negate around M, the siege will probbo tick twice, because M have to spread out of that negate before they can even start purging. In the bustle to spread out, maybe M is able to purge off the snares keeping them inside siege fire and keeping some of their players vulnerable to the S team's enormous capacity for single target damage, but S can reapply those snares endlessly, since no one gets snare immunity, and also S doesn't really have to worry about getting snared themselves. Even if they did, M's not able to hit them right now. They're regrouping and trying not to die.

If M breaks off and sends 1-3 people to fight Doctor Siege, Purge won't help that contingent of M fight the guy on siege; he's fighting them with burst damage concentrated at the right moment while he's whittling away their resources, and he's reapplying snares with seemingly every ability. Meanwhile, the remainder of the group is susceptible to the same bomb they'd get if they charged at the siege line-- a bomb will happen if they let their guard down, no question-- except they have fewer numbers to withstand that bomb. The same conditions as above will apply when the bomb hits; they don't have to worry about the burst damage from the siege if they split people off to occupy the dude on the ballista, but they also have fewer people in the fight. Plus, the pug that's wandered over in the meantime probably put another ballista down.

I'm aware that putting down siege makes the Small group vulnerable too. But you covered that, and you didn't cover that the Medium group faces a sticky situation when faced with siege at all. If Purge is able to hit all of them at once, they're not just gonna stand there and eat the siege, purging it and healing it while also purging the other effects they're taking while engaging the enemy group and also healing through all the regular non-siege damage like invincible walking gods. That's not a thing. There are so many reasons not to stand in one place for more than seconds at a time, beyond just getting sieged. But if siege is to function as a counter to the stationary "purge and heal and barrier through the damage" meta that doesn't even exist anymore, if we deserve to have counters to things (and we do!) then there deserves to be a fair counter to the siege tactic, because siege itself no longer even essentially serves as a a counter to anything; it's a thing we do to make more damage come out.

Namely, I would like my counter to be: the opportunity to move and re-position and spread out and not be endlessly, hopelessly riddled with status effects that do not have a cap, as opposed to our defensive capabilities, which do have a cap, and haven't even worked properly within the confines of that cap since that cap was introduced. No, we shouldn't be able to hit Purge forever and be fine; we also shouldn't be able to re-apply effects forever until our enemies are just standing in quicksand and can't actually physically react and use their brains to execute a maneuver to outplay us. We can't do the former, and we won't be able to do the former if the cap is lifted. But we've been doing the latter for a really long time, and it's gutted the playerbase.

This is a contrived scenario, the thing with the groups. I'm designing it a certain way to demonstrate the absurd complexity of the issue, the fact that the issue isn't simple enough to be condensed into bullet points, the fact that Purge hitting more than 6 people will not suddenly make siege irrelevant or cripple the possibility of successfully fighting outnumbered. I'm choosing certain variables to better illustrate my point, but the fact that there are variables which have been left unconsidered reinforces the complexity of the matter at hand.

Putting down siege is a measurable risk for Small groups fighting against Medium groups or Large (16-24) groups, I agree. But reacting to that siege, dealing with it, is a measurable risk for the group with a mild numerical advantage, a risk for the "ball group". And I should be faced with risk, with potential vulnerabilities: if I fight 10-12 of your guys with 16 of my guys, you deserve to measure your own group's risk and put down siege. It evens things out, offers an edge, rewards a tactical decision. I also deserve to be able to Purge, because my Purge does not cancel your siege; it mitigates it. The fight should not be as simple as me running you down with a numerical advantage, but I also shouldn't be powerless to combat a Deus Ex Machina made out of wood.

But @frozywozy , listen. My boundless yearning for a full-group Purge, my personal distaste for the state of siege, the nightmares I have about giant flaming arrows and sacks of rotting meat, they don't spring to me noggin because those darn 12 man groups mow me down with yonder ballistae, grr, fist shakes at air. Your group fighting my group, that's not a face-off that siege OR Purge is going to tip irrevocably; it could go either way, the advantage would tip back and forth, and a combination of factors would decide the outcome of that fracas.

If you beat me with a clever placement of siege, kudos, well played. You had a mild-to-medium disadvantage, and you turned it to your advantage, and it's phenomenal that the game allows us to do that, that the game occasionally does reward cleverness and creative thinking. I'd whisper you with respect and we'd shake hands and talk about it over the lunch on my dime that I swear to God is going to happen in a paragraph or three.

But that's not how siege functions most of the time, is it? Turning a mildly outnumbered fight around? It can do that, but it usually does something else. There's one really unrealistic element in the endless yarn I've laid out, one omission from the scenario that deserves to be torn to shreds:

In reality, siege almost never actually benefits the smaller group, because it renders a significantly larger group of significantly inferior skill impossible for the smaller group to defeat. The contrived, unrealistic fight of Small versus Medium, that one can go either way with the placement of siege. It levels things out a bit, puts Medium in a tough spot, that good ol' mildly advantaged M group who can't afford to just put down more siege than S has put down, because the more important stuff happens in the actual fight on the ground, as it were, and in any group with less than 20 people you have to be quite precise and thoughtful about where all your people are and what they are doing. That's cool, that's how it should be, and S&M are gonna have a tough imaginary fight, I kinda want to watch the imaginary Shadowplay. But it's not a realistic match-up.

The fights that are most often decided by siege are scaled up a bit from there, and the vulnerabilities you laid out inherent to the placement of siege disappear entirely once the group placing siege has enough numbers. What happens when a Medium group fights a Large group, or a Large group fights a multi-raid Zerg? Those are the fights we're looking at on Trueflame, those are the fights where siege most drastically shifts the balance -- not whatsoever in favor of the outnumbered group.

The Zerg can put down more siege than you or I can. They can spare the numbers. They can spread out so much more than we can, and they do spread out, they have learned to do that, it is reflexive now, because the real Zergs are vulnerable to "balling up" for reasons that have nothing to do with siege. They spread out because the "ball groups" like mine and like VE, we will pounce on their clump and explode them when given the chance. The real Zergs spread out to sow their wild siege, and it comes quite naturally to them, because they are the MCs of Amateur Hour here in Cyrodiil and it feels honest to mill around in a disorganized fashion, searching for a flat piece of ground at which they might plop.

They know all the flat spots, and they place as many machines as they can. They make a circle with them, and they stay there after their friends push forward to use trinkety things like weapons and spells.

Even in my ideal dream reality where Oprah hands out tax-free purges to my entire ball group-- us who are the true Oprah superfans, luckily in attendance at this live recording of her dearly missed daytime television show-- even with these hypothetical infinite purges, we can't just stand there and eat the siege. We can't eat it fighting you, either, but we can respond to it tactically, we can match it or escape it fighting you; the vulnerability of placing siege actually applies to you, because you do not have an infinity of mice to dedicate to left-clicking the ground. Most of your mice are for weapons and spells, as are mine. A few of mine are certainly clicking on Purge, which is not at any scale going to remove your rightful, risk-weighted, strategic attempt to gain and maintain an advantage.

But there is a sea of faces outside, a huge mess of people peppering a huge mess of wooden win machines. A page from Where's Waldo, set at a castle. They're not hopping off between shots, because they have nothing to worry about. The people outside who are not on siege are visibly assigning their champion points. One of them just meteor'ed an NPC. They do not deserve to win this, Frozle O'Dozle. Please give me my purge back.

(Over lunch, I will bring up the fact that Stephen King, in his terrific On Writing, advocates against taking breaks from your routine after you finish a project; set the work you just finished aside until you're ready to revise it, he says, but the day after that, start writing something else. Don't slack off or stall. I'm stalling anyway, looking for loopholes around the idea, but I found a way to fill my daily word count, and now I can goof off for a while without feeling guilty.)

Ghost-Shot

heystreethawk wrote: »

frozywozy wrote: »

Ghost-Shot wrote: »

frozywozy wrote: »

I personally think and HOPE the purge changes won't be reverted. I could see a purge prioritization of siege debuffs being a thing though. No reason to go back to Purge hitting a full 24men ball group with 3-4 dedicated purge spammers who entirely negate the siege effects as the train rolls inside an enemy keep inner breach in full forces. No thanks.

If you can aoe debuff that whole group without even using an ability they should be able to purge everyone.

Let's compare one player using a siege to one player spamming purge affecting his whole 24men ballgroup.

Player using siege

- Deploying a siege and using it put you in a vulnerable state and takes a few seconds to process
- Must fire at the right angle and predict the direction of the ballgroup
- Must wait for the reload time to fire again
- Can only be used on flat surfaces and not too close to other sieges

Player spamming purge

- Purge, especially efficient purge, can be used by any magicka build (very cheap)
- Can be spammed once every global cooldown entirely negating any incoming debuffs
- Can be used anytime anywhere, only require you to follow your big papacrown (exception : negate)
- When being used, keep you entirely safe from anything as long as you keep following your big papacrown and are in range of heals and other buffs affecting your skilled and experienced 24men ballgroup

I follow the logic here, and I wouldn't suggest that reverting Purge is a no-brainer that doesn't carry with it a deadly showdown of Pros vs. Cons, but with each of these different points I think we should consider a few different scenarios. Different pairings of group sizes and different locations play a part in the validity of each of these points, and we should consider the advantages and disadvantages of the builds that we most commonly see in the different group sizes. Unfortunately, this is going to take forever, and I will probably only cover a single scenario. I'll embed it in spoiler tags. Respectfully, it is a lot more complicated than your bullet points suggest.

Deploying a siege and using it put you in a vulnerable state and takes a few seconds to process

Small (4-10) Group vs. Medium Group (10-16)

Let's start with this kind of matchup, because there are more of these two sizes of groups running around than any other size, at least on PC/NA/Trueflame/The Internet. My own group falls into the middle-chunk to large-end of Medium the vast majority of the time. There are not many "ball groups" in the game anymore, let alone those that routinely run 24 players deep, though I suspect the phrase at hand to be an umbrella-toting boogeyman anyway. However, we will assume that the Medium group here has been called a "ball group" at some point in their lives, just as I will tangentially assume enemy combatants label my team the phrase with some frequency. If the M group has 14-16 people, they are probably being called a "ball group" right now, at the outset of our scenario.

Some tactical groundwork to set the stage!

Small groups rely on spreading out enemies and whittling down their ranks (a "focus target" approach, targeting support roles and healers first, once those targets are isolated) before converging on the enemy group at a vulnerable moment. They rely on a spread formation themselves, and the builds you see in Small groups place a much greater emphasis on individual mobility (e.g. not relying on the Rapids or Purges of other players), which allows them to remain spread without becoming nearly as vulnerable as Medium groups do in that circumstance-- the M group can't spread out so much that they are unable to converge when they need to, and they are not able to converge as easily as the S group, because they are designed to fight other M groups, as well as Large groups and Zergs. Small groups tend to be more stam-heavy, because of the mobility and single-target damage potential stam builds have to offer.

M groups equip the skills best suited for fighting M, L, and Z, and since they have a larger size compared to S groups, they can assign group mobility and support abilities to certain players, allowing individuals to equip abilities which make it easier to fight Large groups and Zergs, and this usually affords players within their group more wiggle room to spec outright into damage, which they need to tackle the bigger fish. M groups are as a result more magicka-heavy, because that allows them increased ability to combat L and Z, and the capacity for more dedicated healers/support patrolmen to withstand fights against the bigger crews.

In contrast, we remember Small group builds are designed with much more emphasis on mobility, tankiness, and sustain (you yourself exhibit terrific levels of all 3 on your Templar), because they need those attribute to fight larger groups of lesser or comparable skill. But at a certain size disparity (which is highly dependent upon the skill of each group), Small groups don't really stand a chance against Large groups or Zergs, so they're not going to bother with that spec. They're built to fight individual players, other Smalls, most Mediums, and the small end of extremely chumpy Large-os.

We should also note that Medium groups still exhibit the "focus target" mindset and capacity for an easy spread/converge at the smaller end of their size spectrum, but not nearly as much as Small groups; it's the tradeoff for the M group's capacity to battle L and Z in service of their monarch of choice. Unless an M group's sole purpose in life is to hunt down and murder tiny squads of enemy players, which would be truly sad and ridiculous, players in M groups just don't have the loadout to constantly escape or withstand large amounts of individual, focused pressure (unless they're K-Hole in their prime, or Haxus when they have the numbers online to push into M-class).

In terms of overlapping tactics and strengths, S&M groups are both on the prowl for opportunities to whip the opposing side when that opposition is tied up closely together, and they're both constantly re-evaluating the merits of keeping their group in close proximity to one another against the vulnerabilities which that proximity entails. However, S groups maintain a significantly greater advantage when they're spread, compared to M groups, and they can stay spread out longer without putting themselves at a comparable level of risk. Both groups are paying extremely close attention to the changing variables of the fight at hand (combat awareness), with that awareness diminishing (but not by any means fading into irrelevance) at the larger end of the size spectrum for both groups.

So, uh, only now can we look at how the situation might play out for either side, with regard to the placement of siege making you vulnerable. The idea that setting down siege will make the Small group more vulnerable is a pretty self-contained idea, pretty straightforward, and it's implicitly suggested within your bullet point, so what I'll take the time to do here is whip up an examination that teases out the vulnerabilities which the Medium group faces when faced with that siege. Devil's advocate type of thing.

In open field, let's assume the M group in this scenario is generally positioned toward the spread out S group, although S group is circling around to position themselves more at an angle to the M group-- objective of S being at the moment to kite or flank M, or at the very least, to re-position M in such a way that leaves M's collective back to the siege. S group's siege is angled somewhat to the left or right of the M group (closer to the general spread out location of the remainder of S), or the siege is outright flanking M already. The Medium group is unlikely to rush the player(s) on siege in unison, or split off neatly in a direct and telegraphed fashion, because that would leave their group (whether it's the whole group or the group-split-neatly-in-twain) vulnerable to a bomb which they have a smaller chance of escaping compared to the substantial exiting capacities of the Small group.

Even if M is a confident cat (the Royal Cat, you know, the collective group of a Cat) who believes they have the ability to move quickly in unison to both take out the siege and re-position themselves to some advantage over S (who are already in the process of acquiring a positional advantage over M) without getting snaggled, M rushing that siege as a group or half-O-group would cripple their combat awareness; M would lose the ability to keep tabs on the rest of the S group, and they'd have a diminished capacity to watch for other groups/solo artists arriving from whatever spawn point is in vicinity. I mean, we know fights don't stay isolated from outside parties for long, at least on TF, unless the skirmish been pre-determined and scheduled in a calendar.

Anyhoo. If the M group changes direction and pushes to the siege (which we can surmise is located far enough away from the current position of the M group to necessitate a substantial change of direction on their behalf), the rest of the S group (who we can assume are spread out a shorter distance away from the siege than M) is able to spot that change in movement, converge on the M group, trap them in a Negate / bed of farm fresh Caltrops / whatever else, and drop bombs. With siege still focused on the M group, getting stuck in a Negate for just a couple of seconds is a death sentence. No purges, no heals, and there's damage coming in besides the siege.

It's worth noting that I love that this vulnerability exists; numbers matter less than they are presumed to, or maybe they just matter in a different way, and everything else matters more than we think.

The S group wouldn't get stuck in a negate; they rarely get stuck. Homeboys in S are not comparably vulnerable to Negates for a variety of reasons, and hey, it's pretty cool when this game hints at the existence of balance and tradeoffs of that nature. S has enough to worry about, anyway. I don't think the M group will charge toward the siege as a group, unless the M group is bad. If the M group is bad, they deserve to be caught by the siege bait, and they deserve to be wiped by smaller numbers, because I agree that skill should always triumph. I think bad players agree with that too, but they just don't realize that they're bad.

Other primary option now! If Posse Medium dedicates a person or two to split off and take care of the siege (bearing in mind that the M group does need to be wary of losing a player or two, albeit not as much as the S group), that person on siege will either move away from their siege once they identify the threat (Small group builds being crafted with individual sustain and individual mobility in mind, and chances being high that said build is stamina-flavored, Doctor Siege is very unlikely to be pinned in place by 1-3 players), possibly they will kite the M players away from the rest their group (diminishing the strength of M as they engage the remainder of S), or they will remain in proximity to their siege and fight the players from M who have split off to engage them.

Recalling that S group builds are inclined more toward single target damage, mobility, and endurance under pressure (in short: 1vX), M's choice to split up their not-gargantuan group in order to engage the siege line (if it's 1 person, I should call it a siege dot) has placed the player from S entirely in their element; depending on the skill and build of the player(s) engaging Doctor Siege, the Doc might even have the advantage. Don't get me wrong: Unless the M players at hand are actually very bad (shame on you, M! You deserve to get wiped), Doctor Siege will not be able to defeat the player(s) engaging them at the siege dot without a good opening -- but the Doctor is a patient individual, having made it through medical school at the surprise of his or her cynical parents, and he or she will wait for their foes to exhibit vulnerability.

Even if Dr. S winds up entirely unable to land a single kill, they are probably still alive, and they have managed to isolate + distract 10-33% of the enemy team; it's possible this would give S the ability to push and wipe M right now, depending on the size disparity between the two groups. The fight could be over very soon. But if S doesn't have that chance yet, the players engaging Dr. S have relinquished their combat awareness of the remainder of the S group, who might be presented with a golden opportunity to converge back on the siege dot for an easy takedown of the M players at hand. In some cases, this would leave S with a terrific window to wipe the remainder of M. If that opportunity has still yet to arrive, S can position themselves to make it unlikely for M to succeed in a battle res, and begin to dictate the terms of the fight. If M sends someone off to set up a camp, in lieu of going for the terrible res bait, S will have managed to split M up even more; camp dude might even die en route to the intended position of the camp. We won't get into a full blown camp scenario though, because I do hate them, and it would take more forever to talk about.

Hey, we haven't even gotten to talk about purges yet! Because Purges are not going to make a difference in the scenario thus far. It doesn't really matter if M's purges hit 6 or 12 or 16 here, because somewhere in the ballpark of 50-65% of the factors determining the outcome of Group on Group Action are determined in the very brief eternity wherein the groups are jockeying for a position-based advantage. The outnumbered group has to work harder to gain that advantage, and must seize the opportunity with more speed and ferocity; however, their hard work is not going to be chucked into the garbage once the swords hit the fan simply because their enemies have functional Purges which hit the entirety of their players at once. It's just not going to be the determining factor.

Some examples of why Purge isn't going to make siege irrelevant, a shocking twist about the situations where siege does make it impossible to win a fight (which barely concerns Purge, to be honest), and then I take you out to lunch.

If the M group charges at the siege as a group, they get bombed and CC'ed and hopefully negated. There will be enough damage in the house for S to get some kills in, and if S cannot finish M right there, they can re-position themselves before a counter-bomb from the weakened, diminished M group arrives. M can't purge the incoming damage, they can't purge a hard CC, they can't purge during a negate. They can purge right afterward, but the initial burst damage from the siege is substantial, and combined with a bomb from the portion of the S team who is not just clicking on the ground, the burst damage should be enough to get a happy number of kills, if not a full wipe.

The DoT from the siege will tick at least once more before the M team can break free-- you know that bomb had a Leap or a Dawnbreaker or a Meteor or a Tether or all four at once-- and purge off the siege, regardless of how many people the Purge hits. If there's a negate around M, the siege will probbo tick twice, because M have to spread out of that negate before they can even start purging. In the bustle to spread out, maybe M is able to purge off the snares keeping them inside siege fire and keeping some of their players vulnerable to the S team's enormous capacity for single target damage, but S can reapply those snares endlessly, since no one gets snare immunity, and also S doesn't really have to worry about getting snared themselves. Even if they did, M's not able to hit them right now. They're regrouping and trying not to die.

If M breaks off and sends 1-3 people to fight Doctor Siege, Purge won't help that contingent of M fight the guy on siege; he's fighting them with burst damage concentrated at the right moment while he's whittling away their resources, and he's reapplying snares with seemingly every ability. Meanwhile, the remainder of the group is susceptible to the same bomb they'd get if they charged at the siege line-- a bomb will happen if they let their guard down, no question-- except they have fewer numbers to withstand that bomb. The same conditions as above will apply when the bomb hits; they don't have to worry about the burst damage from the siege if they split people off to occupy the dude on the ballista, but they also have fewer people in the fight. Plus, the pug that's wandered over in the meantime probably put another ballista down.

I'm aware that putting down siege makes the Small group vulnerable too. But you covered that, and you didn't cover that the Medium group faces a sticky situation when faced with siege at all. If Purge is able to hit all of them at once, they're not just gonna stand there and eat the siege, purging it and healing it while also purging the other effects they're taking while engaging the enemy group and also healing through all the regular non-siege damage like invincible walking gods. That's not a thing. There are so many reasons not to stand in one place for more than seconds at a time, beyond just getting sieged. But if siege is to function as a counter to the stationary "purge and heal and barrier through the damage" meta that doesn't even exist anymore, if we deserve to have counters to things (and we do!) then there deserves to be a fair counter to the siege tactic, because siege itself no longer even essentially serves as a a counter to anything; it's a thing we do to make more damage come out.

Namely, I would like my counter to be: the opportunity to move and re-position and spread out and not be endlessly, hopelessly riddled with status effects that do not have a cap, as opposed to our defensive capabilities, which do have a cap, and haven't even worked properly within the confines of that cap since that cap was introduced. No, we shouldn't be able to hit Purge forever and be fine; we also shouldn't be able to re-apply effects forever until our enemies are just standing in quicksand and can't actually physically react and use their brains to execute a maneuver to outplay us. We can't do the former, and we won't be able to do the former if the cap is lifted. But we've been doing the latter for a really long time, and it's gutted the playerbase.

This is a contrived scenario, the thing with the groups. I'm designing it a certain way to demonstrate the absurd complexity of the issue, the fact that the issue isn't simple enough to be condensed into bullet points, the fact that Purge hitting more than 6 people will not suddenly make siege irrelevant or cripple the possibility of successfully fighting outnumbered. I'm choosing certain variables to better illustrate my point, but the fact that there are variables which have been left unconsidered reinforces the complexity of the matter at hand.

Putting down siege is a measurable risk for Small groups fighting against Medium groups or Large (16-24) groups, I agree. But reacting to that siege, dealing with it, is a measurable risk for the group with a mild numerical advantage, a risk for the "ball group". And I should be faced with risk, with potential vulnerabilities: if I fight 10-12 of your guys with 16 of my guys, you deserve to measure your own group's risk and put down siege. It evens things out, offers an edge, rewards a tactical decision. I also deserve to be able to Purge, because my Purge does not cancel your siege; it mitigates it. The fight should not be as simple as me running you down with a numerical advantage, but I also shouldn't be powerless to combat a Deus Ex Machina made out of wood.

But @frozywozy , listen. My boundless yearning for a full-group Purge, my personal distaste for the state of siege, the nightmares I have about giant flaming arrows and sacks of rotting meat, they don't spring to me noggin because those darn 12 man groups mow me down with yonder ballistae, grr, fist shakes at air. Your group fighting my group, that's not a face-off that siege OR Purge is going to tip irrevocably; it could go either way, the advantage would tip back and forth, and a combination of factors would decide the outcome of that fracas.

If you beat me with a clever placement of siege, kudos, well played. You had a mild-to-medium disadvantage, and you turned it to your advantage, and it's phenomenal that the game allows us to do that, that the game occasionally does reward cleverness and creative thinking. I'd whisper you with respect and we'd shake hands and talk about it over the lunch on my dime that I swear to God is going to happen in a paragraph or three.

But that's not how siege functions most of the time, is it? Turning a mildly outnumbered fight around? It can do that, but it usually does something else. There's one really unrealistic element in the endless yarn I've laid out, one omission from the scenario that deserves to be torn to shreds:

In reality, siege almost never actually benefits the smaller group, because it renders a significantly larger group of significantly inferior skill impossible for the smaller group to defeat. The contrived, unrealistic fight of Small versus Medium, that one can go either way with the placement of siege. It levels things out a bit, puts Medium in a tough spot, that good ol' mildly advantaged M group who can't afford to just put down more siege than S has put down, because the more important stuff happens in the actual fight on the ground, as it were, and in any group with less than 20 people you have to be quite precise and thoughtful about where all your people are and what they are doing. That's cool, that's how it should be, and S&M are gonna have a tough imaginary fight, I kinda want to watch the imaginary Shadowplay. But it's not a realistic match-up.

The fights that are most often decided by siege are scaled up a bit from there, and the vulnerabilities you laid out inherent to the placement of siege disappear entirely once the group placing siege has enough numbers. What happens when a Medium group fights a Large group, or a Large group fights a multi-raid Zerg? Those are the fights we're looking at on Trueflame, those are the fights where siege most drastically shifts the balance -- not whatsoever in favor of the outnumbered group.

The Zerg can put down more siege than you or I can. They can spare the numbers. They can spread out so much more than we can, and they do spread out, they have learned to do that, it is reflexive now, because the real Zergs are vulnerable to "balling up" for reasons that have nothing to do with siege. They spread out because the "ball groups" like mine and like VE, we will pounce on their clump and explode them when given the chance. The real Zergs spread out to sow their wild siege, and it comes quite naturally to them, because they are the MCs of Amateur Hour here in Cyrodiil and it feels honest to mill around in a disorganized fashion, searching for a flat piece of ground at which they might plop.

They know all the flat spots, and they place as many machines as they can. They make a circle with them, and they stay there after their friends push forward to use trinkety things like weapons and spells.

Even in my ideal dream reality where Oprah hands out tax-free purges to my entire ball group-- us who are the true Oprah superfans, luckily in attendance at this live recording of her dearly missed daytime television show-- even with these hypothetical infinite purges, we can't just stand there and eat the siege. We can't eat it fighting you, either, but we can respond to it tactically, we can match it or escape it fighting you; the vulnerability of placing siege actually applies to you, because you do not have an infinity of mice to dedicate to left-clicking the ground. Most of your mice are for weapons and spells, as are mine. A few of mine are certainly clicking on Purge, which is not at any scale going to remove your rightful, risk-weighted, strategic attempt to gain and maintain an advantage.

But there is a sea of faces outside, a huge mess of people peppering a huge mess of wooden win machines. A page from Where's Waldo, set at a castle. They're not hopping off between shots, because they have nothing to worry about. The people outside who are not on siege are visibly assigning their champion points. One of them just meteor'ed an NPC. They do not deserve to win this, Frozle O'Dozle. Please give me my purge back.

(Over lunch, I will bring up the fact that Stephen King, in his terrific On Writing, advocates against taking breaks from your routine after you finish a project; set the work you just finished aside until you're ready to revise it, he says, but the day after that, start writing something else. Don't slack off or stall. I'm stalling anyway, looking for loopholes around the idea, but I found a way to fill my daily word count, and now I can goof off for a while without feeling guilty.)

Well Josh wins the forums today, time to call it a day folks.

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO

I would happily lower the number of people purge effects in exchange increasing the number of debuffs it removes and stopping it only affect the first x in group and no one past that.

frozywozy

heystreethawk wrote: »

frozywozy wrote: »

Ghost-Shot wrote: »

frozywozy wrote: »

I personally think and HOPE the purge changes won't be reverted. I could see a purge prioritization of siege debuffs being a thing though. No reason to go back to Purge hitting a full 24men ball group with 3-4 dedicated purge spammers who entirely negate the siege effects as the train rolls inside an enemy keep inner breach in full forces. No thanks.

If you can aoe debuff that whole group without even using an ability they should be able to purge everyone.

Let's compare one player using a siege to one player spamming purge affecting his whole 24men ballgroup.

Player using siege

- Deploying a siege and using it put you in a vulnerable state and takes a few seconds to process
- Must fire at the right angle and predict the direction of the ballgroup
- Must wait for the reload time to fire again
- Can only be used on flat surfaces and not too close to other sieges

Player spamming purge

- Purge, especially efficient purge, can be used by any magicka build (very cheap)
- Can be spammed once every global cooldown entirely negating any incoming debuffs
- Can be used anytime anywhere, only require you to follow your big papacrown (exception : negate)
- When being used, keep you entirely safe from anything as long as you keep following your big papacrown and are in range of heals and other buffs affecting your skilled and experienced 24men ballgroup

I follow the logic here, and I wouldn't suggest that reverting Purge is a no-brainer that doesn't carry with it a deadly showdown of Pros vs. Cons, but with each of these different points I think we should consider a few different scenarios. Different pairings of group sizes and different locations play a part in the validity of each of these notions, and we should consider the advantages and disadvantages of the builds that we most commonly see in the different group sizes. Unfortunately, this is going to take forever, and I will probably only cover a single scenario. I'll embed it in spoiler tags. Respectfully, it is a lot more complicated than your bullet points suggest.

Deploying a siege and using it put you in a vulnerable state and takes a few seconds to process

Small (4-10) Group vs. Medium Group (10-16)

Let's start with this kind of matchup, because there are more of these two sizes of groups running around than any other size, at least on PC/NA/Trueflame/The Internet. My own group falls into the middle-chunk to large-end of Medium the vast majority of the time, and we spend about 60-90 minutes of our designated raid nights in the Large group tax bracket. There are not many "ball groups" in the game anymore, let alone those that routinely run 24 players deep, though I suspect the phrase at hand to be an umbrella-toting boogeyman anyway. However, we will assume that the Medium group here has been called a "ball group" at some point in their lives, just as I will tangentially assume enemy combatants label my team the phrase with some frequency. If the M group has 14-16 people, they are probably being called a "ball group" right now, at the outset of our scenario.

Some tactical groundwork to set the stage!

Small groups rely on spreading out enemies and whittling down their ranks (a "focus target" approach, targeting support roles and healers first, once those targets are isolated) before converging on the enemy group at a vulnerable moment. They rely on a spread formation themselves, and the builds you see in Small groups place a much greater emphasis on individual mobility (e.g. not relying on the Rapids or Purges of other players), which allows them to remain spread without becoming nearly as vulnerable as Medium groups do in that circumstance-- the M group can't spread out so much that they are unable to converge when they need to, and they are not able to converge as easily as the S group, because they are designed to fight other M groups, as well as Large groups and Zergs. Small groups tend to be more stam-heavy, because of the mobility and single-target damage potential stam builds have to offer.

M groups equip the skills best suited for fighting M, L, and Z, and since they have a larger size compared to S groups, they can assign group mobility and support abilities to certain players, allowing individuals to equip abilities which make it easier to fight Large groups and Zergs, and this usually affords players within their group more wiggle room to spec outright into damage, which they need to tackle the bigger fish. M groups are as a result more magicka-heavy, because that allows them increased ability to combat L and Z, and the capacity for more dedicated healers/support patrolmen to withstand fights against the bigger crews.

In contrast, we remember Small group builds are designed with much more emphasis on mobility, tankiness, and sustain (you yourself exhibit terrific levels of all 3 on your Templar), because they need those attribute to fight larger groups of lesser or comparable skill. But at a certain size disparity (which is highly dependent upon the skill of each group), Small groups don't really stand a chance against Large groups or Zergs, so they're not going to bother with the chunk-busting spec favored by M. They're instead built to fight individual players, other Smalls, most Mediums, and the small end of extremely chumpy Large-os inclined to follow dangling carrots and caught on tape never even noticing that a conspicuous moving shrub has a pair of humanoid legs poking out of it.

We should also note that Medium groups still exhibit the "focus target" mindset and capacity for an easy spread/converge at the smaller end of their size spectrum, but not nearly as much as Small groups; it's the tradeoff for the M group's capacity to battle L and Z in service of their monarch of choice. Unless an M group's sole purpose in life is to hunt down and murder tiny squads of enemy players, which would be truly sad and ridiculous, players in M groups just don't have the loadout to constantly escape or withstand large amounts of individual, focused pressure (unless they're K-Hole in their prime, or Haxus when they have the numbers online to push into M-class).

In terms of overlapping tactics and strengths, S&M groups are both on the prowl for opportunities to whip the opposing side when that opposition is tied up closely together, and they're both constantly re-evaluating the merits of keeping their group in close proximity to one another against the vulnerabilities which that proximity entails. However, S groups maintain a significantly greater advantage when they're spread, compared to M groups, and they can stay spread out longer without putting themselves at a comparable level of risk. Both groups are paying extremely close attention to the changing variables of the fight at hand (combat awareness), with that awareness diminishing (but not by any means fading into irrelevance) at the larger end of the size spectrum for both groups.

So, uh, only now can we look at how the situation might play out for either side, with regard to the placement of siege making you vulnerable. The idea that setting down siege will make the Small group more vulnerable is a pretty self-contained idea, pretty straightforward, and it's implicitly suggested within your bullet point, so what I'll take the time to do here is whip up an examination that teases out the vulnerabilities which the Medium group faces when faced with that siege. Devil's advocate type of thing.

In open field, let's assume the M group in this scenario is generally positioned toward the spread out S group, although S group is circling around to position themselves more at an angle to the M group-- objective of S being at the moment to kite or flank M, or at the very least, to re-position M in such a way that leaves M's collective back to the siege. S group's siege is angled somewhat to the left or right of the M group (closer to the general spread out location of the remainder of S), or the siege is outright flanking M already. The Medium group is unlikely to rush the player(s) on siege in unison, or split off neatly in a direct and telegraphed fashion, because that would leave their group (whether it's the whole group or the group-split-neatly-in-twain) vulnerable to a bomb which they have a smaller chance of escaping compared to the substantial exiting capacities of the Small group.

Even if M is a confident cat (the Royal Cat, you know, the collective group of a Cat) who believes they have the ability to move quickly in unison to both take out the siege and re-position themselves to some advantage over S (who are already in the process of acquiring a positional advantage over M) without getting snaggled, M rushing that siege as a group or half-O-group would cripple their combat awareness; M would lose the ability to keep tabs on the rest of the S group, and they'd have a diminished capacity to watch for other groups/solo artists arriving from whatever spawn point is in vicinity. I mean, we know fights don't stay isolated from outside parties for long, at least on TF, unless the skirmish been pre-determined and scheduled in a calendar.

Anyhoo. If the M group changes direction and pushes to the siege (which we can surmise is located far enough away from the current position of the M group to necessitate a substantial change of direction on their behalf), the rest of the S group (who we can assume are spread out a shorter distance away from the siege than M) is able to spot that change in movement, converge on the M group, trap them in a Negate / bed of farm fresh Caltrops / whatever else, and drop bombs. With siege still focused on the M group, getting stuck in a Negate for just a couple of seconds is a death sentence. No purges, no heals, and there's damage coming in besides the siege.

It's worth noting that I love that this vulnerability exists; numbers matter less than they are presumed to, or maybe they just matter in a different way, and everything else matters more than we think.

The S group wouldn't get stuck in a negate; they rarely get stuck. Homeboys in S are not comparably vulnerable to Negates for a variety of reasons, and hey, it's pretty cool when this game hints at the existence of balance and tradeoffs of that nature. S has enough to worry about, anyway. I don't think the M group will charge toward the siege as a group, unless the M group is bad. If the M group is bad, they deserve to be caught by the siege bait, and they deserve to be wiped by smaller numbers, because I agree that skill should always triumph. I think bad players agree with that too, but they just don't realize that they're bad.

Other primary option now! If Posse Medium dedicates a person or two to split off and take care of the siege (bearing in mind that the M group does need to be wary of losing a player or two, albeit not as much as the S group), that person on siege will either move away from their siege once they identify the threat (Small group builds being crafted with individual sustain and individual mobility in mind, and chances being high that said build is stamina-flavored, Doctor Siege is very unlikely to be pinned in place by 1-3 players), possibly they will kite the M players away from the rest their group (diminishing the strength of M as they engage the remainder of S), or they will remain in proximity to their siege and fight the players from M who have split off to engage them.

Recalling that S group builds are inclined more toward single target damage, mobility, and endurance under pressure (in short: 1vX), M's choice to split up their not-gargantuan group in order to engage the siege line (if it's 1 person, I should call it a siege dot) has placed the player from S entirely in their element; depending on the skill and build of the player(s) engaging Doctor Siege, the Doc might even have the advantage. Don't get me wrong: Unless the M players at hand are actually very bad (shame on you, M! You deserve to get wiped), Doctor Siege will not be able to defeat the player(s) engaging them at the siege dot without a good opening -- but the Doctor is a patient individual, having made it through medical school at the surprise of his or her cynical parents, and he or she will wait for their foes to exhibit vulnerability.

Even if Dr. S winds up entirely unable to land a single kill, they are probably still alive, and they have managed to isolate / distract 10-20+% of the enemy team; it's possible this would give S the ability to push and wipe M right now, depending on the size disparity between the two groups. The fight could be over very soon. But if S doesn't have that chance yet, the players engaging Dr. S have relinquished their combat awareness of the remainder of the S group, who might be presented with a golden opportunity to converge back on the siege dot for an easy takedown of the M players at hand. In some cases, this would leave S with a terrific window to wipe the remainder of M. If that opportunity has still yet to arrive, S can position themselves to make it unlikely for M to succeed in a battle res, and begin to dictate the terms of the fight. If M sends someone off to set up a camp, in lieu of going for the terrible res bait, S will have managed to split M up even more; camp dude might even die en route to the intended position of the camp. We won't get into a full blown camp scenario though, because I do hate them, and it would take more forever to talk about.

Hey, we haven't even gotten to talk about purges yet! Because Purges are not going to make a difference in the scenario thus far. It doesn't really matter if M's purges hit 6 or 12 or 16 here, because somewhere in the ballpark of 50-65% of the factors determining the outcome of Group on Group Action are determined in the very brief eternity wherein the groups are jockeying for a position-based advantage. The outnumbered group has to work harder to gain that advantage, and must seize the opportunity with more speed and ferocity; however, their hard work is not going to be chucked into the garbage once the swords hit the fan simply because their enemies have functional Purges which hit the entirety of their players at once. It's just not going to be the determining factor.

Some examples of why Purge isn't going to make siege irrelevant, a shocking twist about the situations where siege does make it impossible to win a fight (which barely concerns Purge, to be honest), and then I take you out to lunch.

If the M group charges at the siege as a group, they get bombed and CC'ed and hopefully negated. There will be enough damage in the house for S to get some kills in, and if S cannot finish M right there, they can re-position themselves before a counter-bomb from the weakened, diminished M group arrives. M can't purge the incoming damage, they can't purge a hard CC, they can't purge during a negate. They can purge right afterward, but the initial burst damage from the siege is substantial, and combined with a bomb from the portion of the S team who is not just clicking on the ground, the burst damage should be enough to get a happy number of kills, if not a full wipe.

The DoT from the siege will tick at least once more before the M team can break free-- you know that bomb had a Leap or a Dawnbreaker or a Meteor or a Tether or all four at once-- and purge off the siege, regardless of how many people the Purge hits. If there's a negate around M, the siege will probbo tick twice, because M have to spread out of that negate before they can even start purging. In the bustle to spread out, maybe M is able to purge off the snares keeping them inside siege fire and keeping some of their players vulnerable to the S team's enormous capacity for single target damage, but S can reapply those snares endlessly, since no one gets snare immunity, and also S doesn't really have to worry about getting snared themselves. Even if they did, M's not able to hit them right now. They're regrouping and trying not to die.

If M breaks off and sends 1-3 people to fight Doctor Siege, Purge won't help that contingent of M fight the guy on siege; he's fighting them with burst damage concentrated at the right moment while he's whittling away their resources, and he's reapplying snares with seemingly every ability. Meanwhile, the remainder of the group is susceptible to the same bomb they'd get if they charged at the siege line-- a bomb will happen if they let their guard down, no question-- except they have fewer numbers to withstand that bomb. The same conditions as above will apply when the bomb hits; they don't have to worry about the burst damage from the siege if they split people off to occupy the dude on the ballista, but they also have fewer people in the fight. Plus, the pug that's wandered over in the meantime probably put another ballista down.

I'm aware that putting down siege makes the Small group vulnerable too. But you covered that, and you didn't cover that the Medium group faces a sticky situation when faced with siege at all. If Purge is able to hit all of them at once, they're not just gonna stand there and eat the siege, purging it and healing it while also purging the other effects they're taking while engaging the enemy group and also healing through all the regular non-siege damage like invincible walking gods. That's not a thing. There are so many reasons not to stand in one place for more than seconds at a time, beyond just getting sieged. But if siege is to function as a counter to the stationary "purge and heal and barrier through the damage" meta that doesn't even exist anymore, if we deserve to have counters to things (and we do!) then there deserves to be a fair counter to the siege tactic, because siege itself no longer even essentially serves as a a counter to anything; it's a thing we do to make more damage come out.

Namely, I would like my counter to be: the opportunity to move and re-position and spread out and not be endlessly, hopelessly riddled with status effects that do not have a cap, as opposed to our defensive capabilities, which do have a cap, and haven't even worked properly within the confines of that cap since that cap was introduced. No, we shouldn't be able to hit Purge forever and be fine; we also shouldn't be able to re-apply effects forever until our enemies are just standing in quicksand and can't actually physically react and use their brains to execute a maneuver to outplay us. We can't do the former, and we won't be able to do the former if the cap is lifted. But we've been doing the latter for a really long time, and it's gutted the playerbase.

This is a contrived scenario, the thing with the groups. I'm designing it a certain way to demonstrate the absurd complexity of the issue, the fact that the issue isn't simple enough to be condensed into bullet points, the fact that Purge hitting more than 6 people will not suddenly make siege irrelevant or cripple the possibility of successfully fighting outnumbered. I'm choosing certain variables to better illustrate my point, but the fact that there are variables which have been left unconsidered reinforces the complexity of the matter at hand.

Putting down siege is a measurable risk for Small groups fighting against Medium groups or Large (16-24) groups, I agree. But reacting to that siege, dealing with it, is a measurable risk for the group with a mild numerical advantage, a risk for the "ball group". And I should be faced with risk, with potential vulnerabilities: if I fight 10-12 of your guys with 16 of my guys, you deserve to measure your own group's risk and put down siege. It evens things out, offers an edge, rewards a tactical decision. I also deserve to be able to Purge, because my Purge does not cancel your siege; it mitigates it. The fight should not be as simple as me running you down with a numerical advantage, but I also shouldn't be powerless to combat a Deus Ex Machina made out of wood.

But @frozywozy , listen. My boundless yearning for a full-group Purge, my personal distaste for the state of siege, the nightmares I have about giant flaming arrows and sacks of rotting meat, they don't spring to me noggin because those darn 12 man groups mow me down with yonder ballistae, grr, fist shakes at air. Your group fighting my group, that's not a face-off that siege OR Purge is going to tip irrevocably; it could go either way, the advantage would tip back and forth, and a combination of factors would decide the outcome of that fracas.

If you beat me with a clever placement of siege, kudos, well played. You had a mild-to-medium disadvantage, and you turned it to your advantage, and it's phenomenal that the game allows us to do that, that the game occasionally does reward cleverness and creative thinking. I'd whisper you with respect and we'd shake hands and talk about it over the lunch on my dime that I swear to God is going to happen in a paragraph or three.

But that's not how siege functions most of the time, is it? Turning a mildly outnumbered fight around? It can do that, but it usually does something else. There's one really unrealistic element in the endless yarn I've laid out, one omission from the scenario that deserves to be torn to shreds:

In reality, siege almost never actually benefits the smaller group, because it renders a significantly larger group of significantly inferior skill impossible for the smaller group to defeat. The contrived, unrealistic fight of Small versus Medium, that one can go either way with the placement of siege. It levels things out a bit, puts Medium in a tough spot, that good ol' mildly advantaged M group who can't afford to just put down more siege than S has put down, because the more important stuff happens in the actual fight on the ground, as it were, and in any group with less than 20 people you have to be quite precise and thoughtful about where all your people are and what they are doing. That's cool, that's how it should be, and S&M are gonna have a tough imaginary fight, I kinda want to watch the imaginary Shadowplay. But it's not a realistic match-up.

The fights that are most often decided by siege are scaled up a bit from there, and the vulnerabilities you laid out inherent to the placement of siege disappear entirely once the group placing siege has enough numbers. What happens when a Medium group fights a Large group, or a Large group fights a multi-raid Zerg? Those are the fights we're looking at on Trueflame, those are the fights where siege most drastically shifts the balance -- not whatsoever in favor of the outnumbered group.

The Zerg can put down more siege than you or I can. They can spare the numbers. They can spread out so much more than we can, and they do spread out, they have learned to do that, it is reflexive now, because the real Zergs are vulnerable to "balling up" for reasons that have nothing to do with siege. They spread out because the "ball groups" like mine and like VE, we will pounce on their clump and explode them when given the chance. The real Zergs spread out to sow their wild siege, and it comes quite naturally to them, because they are the MCs of Amateur Hour here in Cyrodiil and it feels honest to mill around in a disorganized fashion, searching for a flat piece of ground at which they might plop.

They know all the flat spots, and they place as many machines as they can. They make a circle with them, and they stay there after their friends push forward to use trinkety things like weapons and spells.

Even in my ideal dream reality where Oprah hands out tax-free purges to my entire ball group-- us who are the true Oprah superfans, luckily in attendance at this live recording of her dearly missed daytime television show-- even with these hypothetical infinite purges, we can't just stand there and eat the siege. We can't eat it fighting you, either, but we can respond to it tactically, we can match it or escape it fighting you; the vulnerability of placing siege actually applies to you, because you do not have an infinity of mice to dedicate to left-clicking the ground. Most of your mice are for weapons and spells, as are mine. A few of mine are certainly clicking on Purge, which is not at any scale going to remove your rightful, risk-weighted, strategic attempt to gain and maintain an advantage.

But there is a sea of faces outside, a huge mess of people peppering a huge mess of wooden win machines. A page from Where's Waldo, set at a castle. They're not hopping off between shots, because they have nothing to worry about. The people outside who are not on siege are visibly assigning their champion points. One of them just meteor'ed an NPC. They do not deserve to win this, Frozle O'Dozle. Please give me my purge back.

(Over lunch, I will bring up the fact that Stephen King, in his terrific On Writing, advocates against taking breaks from your routine after you finish a project; set the work you just finished aside until you're ready to revise it, he says, but the day after that, start writing something else. Don't slack off or stall. I'm stalling anyway, looking for loopholes around the idea, but I found a way to fill my daily word count, and now I can goof off for a while without feeling guilty.)

I just finished reading this. You start your paragraph saying that you think the situation is much more complicated than it looks. Then you continue saying that you will elaborate into the multiple different scenarios involved with the use of sieges VS purges with all the different group sizes.

95% of your text talks about a small group facing a medium group. Now, when in my posts did I talk about a small group facing a medium group? Nowhere. I've given my input on one player trying to do any impact sieging a 24men ballgroup spamming purges affecting the entire raid. We've been there before. I've seen it hundred times. It's been discussed by plenty of people giving strong and valid arguments from both sizes. A 24men ballgroup (Not medium) but full 24men organized stacked group spamming purges (you see them when they roll inside the breach, their whole group is flashing in pure and refreshing sunlight) is totally invincible to any incoming siege damage. No matter the amount of sieges you throw at them (2-3fire balistas, 2 meatbags, 3 oils, it doesn't matter. They don't die if purge affects the whole group. They roll on the flags and flip the keep without even dealing any damage if they want. They just have to stand in a tight ball on the flags under a siege shield, spamming purges, healing springs, healing ultis and ggwp.

Regarding the openfield scenarios, I've always said that larger groups should have a MAJOR advantage in any openfield battle. Small / Medium groups use choke points and LoS to their advantage against larger groups. If one faction deploys enough siege on a specific location, you either push into it and suicide most likely, or you accept the fact that you lost the tactical use of that specific location and move behind LoS. It is as simple as that. When I run with organized groups (Because I have done quite often recently), we are constantly fighting 24men ballgroups or multiple raids of different sized groups. Anytime we stay too long around the same locations, we will see a considerable amount of sieges being deployed. If we get to that point, it means that we haven't acted fast enough to burst down a considerable amount of them to control the territory. The leader will usually move the group behind LoS of any siege and relocate the battle in a safe environnement for us.

So yes, the larger groups have more options to set siege down, but it is a matter of movement and burst that will determine if you can control the territory or if you have to submit and get the battle to the next area.

heystreethawk

frozywozy wrote: »

heystreethawk wrote: »

frozywozy wrote: »

Ghost-Shot wrote: »

frozywozy wrote: »

I personally think and HOPE the purge changes won't be reverted. I could see a purge prioritization of siege debuffs being a thing though. No reason to go back to Purge hitting a full 24men ball group with 3-4 dedicated purge spammers who entirely negate the siege effects as the train rolls inside an enemy keep inner breach in full forces. No thanks.

If you can aoe debuff that whole group without even using an ability they should be able to purge everyone.

Let's compare one player using a siege to one player spamming purge affecting his whole 24men ballgroup.

Player using siege

- Deploying a siege and using it put you in a vulnerable state and takes a few seconds to process
- Must fire at the right angle and predict the direction of the ballgroup
- Must wait for the reload time to fire again
- Can only be used on flat surfaces and not too close to other sieges

Player spamming purge

- Purge, especially efficient purge, can be used by any magicka build (very cheap)
- Can be spammed once every global cooldown entirely negating any incoming debuffs
- Can be used anytime anywhere, only require you to follow your big papacrown (exception : negate)
- When being used, keep you entirely safe from anything as long as you keep following your big papacrown and are in range of heals and other buffs affecting your skilled and experienced 24men ballgroup

I follow the logic here, and I wouldn't suggest that reverting Purge is a no-brainer that doesn't carry with it a deadly showdown of Pros vs. Cons, but with each of these different points I think we should consider a few different scenarios. Different pairings of group sizes and different locations play a part in the validity of each of these notions, and we should consider the advantages and disadvantages of the builds that we most commonly see in the different group sizes. Unfortunately, this is going to take forever, and I will probably only cover a single scenario. I'll embed it in spoiler tags. Respectfully, it is a lot more complicated than your bullet points suggest.

Deploying a siege and using it put you in a vulnerable state and takes a few seconds to process

Small (4-10) Group vs. Medium Group (10-16)

Let's start with this kind of matchup, because there are more of these two sizes of groups running around than any other size, at least on PC/NA/Trueflame/The Internet. My own group falls into the middle-chunk to large-end of Medium the vast majority of the time, and we spend about 60-90 minutes of our designated raid nights in the Large group tax bracket. There are not many "ball groups" in the game anymore, let alone those that routinely run 24 players deep, though I suspect the phrase at hand to be an umbrella-toting boogeyman anyway. However, we will assume that the Medium group here has been called a "ball group" at some point in their lives, just as I will tangentially assume enemy combatants label my team the phrase with some frequency. If the M group has 14-16 people, they are probably being called a "ball group" right now, at the outset of our scenario.

Some tactical groundwork to set the stage!

Small groups rely on spreading out enemies and whittling down their ranks (a "focus target" approach, targeting support roles and healers first, once those targets are isolated) before converging on the enemy group at a vulnerable moment. They rely on a spread formation themselves, and the builds you see in Small groups place a much greater emphasis on individual mobility (e.g. not relying on the Rapids or Purges of other players), which allows them to remain spread without becoming nearly as vulnerable as Medium groups do in that circumstance-- the M group can't spread out so much that they are unable to converge when they need to, and they are not able to converge as easily as the S group, because they are designed to fight other M groups, as well as Large groups and Zergs. Small groups tend to be more stam-heavy, because of the mobility and single-target damage potential stam builds have to offer.

M groups equip the skills best suited for fighting M, L, and Z, and since they have a larger size compared to S groups, they can assign group mobility and support abilities to certain players, allowing individuals to equip abilities which make it easier to fight Large groups and Zergs, and this usually affords players within their group more wiggle room to spec outright into damage, which they need to tackle the bigger fish. M groups are as a result more magicka-heavy, because that allows them increased ability to combat L and Z, and the capacity for more dedicated healers/support patrolmen to withstand fights against the bigger crews.

In contrast, we remember Small group builds are designed with much more emphasis on mobility, tankiness, and sustain (you yourself exhibit terrific levels of all 3 on your Templar), because they need those attribute to fight larger groups of lesser or comparable skill. But at a certain size disparity (which is highly dependent upon the skill of each group), Small groups don't really stand a chance against Large groups or Zergs, so they're not going to bother with the chunk-busting spec favored by M. They're instead built to fight individual players, other Smalls, most Mediums, and the small end of extremely chumpy Large-os inclined to follow dangling carrots and caught on tape never even noticing that a conspicuous moving shrub has a pair of humanoid legs poking out of it.

We should also note that Medium groups still exhibit the "focus target" mindset and capacity for an easy spread/converge at the smaller end of their size spectrum, but not nearly as much as Small groups; it's the tradeoff for the M group's capacity to battle L and Z in service of their monarch of choice. Unless an M group's sole purpose in life is to hunt down and murder tiny squads of enemy players, which would be truly sad and ridiculous, players in M groups just don't have the loadout to constantly escape or withstand large amounts of individual, focused pressure (unless they're K-Hole in their prime, or Haxus when they have the numbers online to push into M-class).

In terms of overlapping tactics and strengths, S&M groups are both on the prowl for opportunities to whip the opposing side when that opposition is tied up closely together, and they're both constantly re-evaluating the merits of keeping their group in close proximity to one another against the vulnerabilities which that proximity entails. However, S groups maintain a significantly greater advantage when they're spread, compared to M groups, and they can stay spread out longer without putting themselves at a comparable level of risk. Both groups are paying extremely close attention to the changing variables of the fight at hand (combat awareness), with that awareness diminishing (but not by any means fading into irrelevance) at the larger end of the size spectrum for both groups.

So, uh, only now can we look at how the situation might play out for either side, with regard to the placement of siege making you vulnerable. The idea that setting down siege will make the Small group more vulnerable is a pretty self-contained idea, pretty straightforward, and it's implicitly suggested within your bullet point, so what I'll take the time to do here is whip up an examination that teases out the vulnerabilities which the Medium group faces when faced with that siege. Devil's advocate type of thing.

In open field, let's assume the M group in this scenario is generally positioned toward the spread out S group, although S group is circling around to position themselves more at an angle to the M group-- objective of S being at the moment to kite or flank M, or at the very least, to re-position M in such a way that leaves M's collective back to the siege. S group's siege is angled somewhat to the left or right of the M group (closer to the general spread out location of the remainder of S), or the siege is outright flanking M already. The Medium group is unlikely to rush the player(s) on siege in unison, or split off neatly in a direct and telegraphed fashion, because that would leave their group (whether it's the whole group or the group-split-neatly-in-twain) vulnerable to a bomb which they have a smaller chance of escaping compared to the substantial exiting capacities of the Small group.

Even if M is a confident cat (the Royal Cat, you know, the collective group of a Cat) who believes they have the ability to move quickly in unison to both take out the siege and re-position themselves to some advantage over S (who are already in the process of acquiring a positional advantage over M) without getting snaggled, M rushing that siege as a group or half-O-group would cripple their combat awareness; M would lose the ability to keep tabs on the rest of the S group, and they'd have a diminished capacity to watch for other groups/solo artists arriving from whatever spawn point is in vicinity. I mean, we know fights don't stay isolated from outside parties for long, at least on TF, unless the skirmish been pre-determined and scheduled in a calendar.

Anyhoo. If the M group changes direction and pushes to the siege (which we can surmise is located far enough away from the current position of the M group to necessitate a substantial change of direction on their behalf), the rest of the S group (who we can assume are spread out a shorter distance away from the siege than M) is able to spot that change in movement, converge on the M group, trap them in a Negate / bed of farm fresh Caltrops / whatever else, and drop bombs. With siege still focused on the M group, getting stuck in a Negate for just a couple of seconds is a death sentence. No purges, no heals, and there's damage coming in besides the siege.

It's worth noting that I love that this vulnerability exists; numbers matter less than they are presumed to, or maybe they just matter in a different way, and everything else matters more than we think.

The S group wouldn't get stuck in a negate; they rarely get stuck. Homeboys in S are not comparably vulnerable to Negates for a variety of reasons, and hey, it's pretty cool when this game hints at the existence of balance and tradeoffs of that nature. S has enough to worry about, anyway. I don't think the M group will charge toward the siege as a group, unless the M group is bad. If the M group is bad, they deserve to be caught by the siege bait, and they deserve to be wiped by smaller numbers, because I agree that skill should always triumph. I think bad players agree with that too, but they just don't realize that they're bad.

Other primary option now! If Posse Medium dedicates a person or two to split off and take care of the siege (bearing in mind that the M group does need to be wary of losing a player or two, albeit not as much as the S group), that person on siege will either move away from their siege once they identify the threat (Small group builds being crafted with individual sustain and individual mobility in mind, and chances being high that said build is stamina-flavored, Doctor Siege is very unlikely to be pinned in place by 1-3 players), possibly they will kite the M players away from the rest their group (diminishing the strength of M as they engage the remainder of S), or they will remain in proximity to their siege and fight the players from M who have split off to engage them.

Recalling that S group builds are inclined more toward single target damage, mobility, and endurance under pressure (in short: 1vX), M's choice to split up their not-gargantuan group in order to engage the siege line (if it's 1 person, I should call it a siege dot) has placed the player from S entirely in their element; depending on the skill and build of the player(s) engaging Doctor Siege, the Doc might even have the advantage. Don't get me wrong: Unless the M players at hand are actually very bad (shame on you, M! You deserve to get wiped), Doctor Siege will not be able to defeat the player(s) engaging them at the siege dot without a good opening -- but the Doctor is a patient individual, having made it through medical school at the surprise of his or her cynical parents, and he or she will wait for their foes to exhibit vulnerability.

Even if Dr. S winds up entirely unable to land a single kill, they are probably still alive, and they have managed to isolate / distract 10-20+% of the enemy team; it's possible this would give S the ability to push and wipe M right now, depending on the size disparity between the two groups. The fight could be over very soon. But if S doesn't have that chance yet, the players engaging Dr. S have relinquished their combat awareness of the remainder of the S group, who might be presented with a golden opportunity to converge back on the siege dot for an easy takedown of the M players at hand. In some cases, this would leave S with a terrific window to wipe the remainder of M. If that opportunity has still yet to arrive, S can position themselves to make it unlikely for M to succeed in a battle res, and begin to dictate the terms of the fight. If M sends someone off to set up a camp, in lieu of going for the terrible res bait, S will have managed to split M up even more; camp dude might even die en route to the intended position of the camp. We won't get into a full blown camp scenario though, because I do hate them, and it would take more forever to talk about.

Hey, we haven't even gotten to talk about purges yet! Because Purges are not going to make a difference in the scenario thus far. It doesn't really matter if M's purges hit 6 or 12 or 16 here, because somewhere in the ballpark of 50-65% of the factors determining the outcome of Group on Group Action are determined in the very brief eternity wherein the groups are jockeying for a position-based advantage. The outnumbered group has to work harder to gain that advantage, and must seize the opportunity with more speed and ferocity; however, their hard work is not going to be chucked into the garbage once the swords hit the fan simply because their enemies have functional Purges which hit the entirety of their players at once. It's just not going to be the determining factor.

Some examples of why Purge isn't going to make siege irrelevant, a shocking twist about the situations where siege does make it impossible to win a fight (which barely concerns Purge, to be honest), and then I take you out to lunch.

If the M group charges at the siege as a group, they get bombed and CC'ed and hopefully negated. There will be enough damage in the house for S to get some kills in, and if S cannot finish M right there, they can re-position themselves before a counter-bomb from the weakened, diminished M group arrives. M can't purge the incoming damage, they can't purge a hard CC, they can't purge during a negate. They can purge right afterward, but the initial burst damage from the siege is substantial, and combined with a bomb from the portion of the S team who is not just clicking on the ground, the burst damage should be enough to get a happy number of kills, if not a full wipe.

The DoT from the siege will tick at least once more before the M team can break free-- you know that bomb had a Leap or a Dawnbreaker or a Meteor or a Tether or all four at once-- and purge off the siege, regardless of how many people the Purge hits. If there's a negate around M, the siege will probbo tick twice, because M have to spread out of that negate before they can even start purging. In the bustle to spread out, maybe M is able to purge off the snares keeping them inside siege fire and keeping some of their players vulnerable to the S team's enormous capacity for single target damage, but S can reapply those snares endlessly, since no one gets snare immunity, and also S doesn't really have to worry about getting snared themselves. Even if they did, M's not able to hit them right now. They're regrouping and trying not to die.

If M breaks off and sends 1-3 people to fight Doctor Siege, Purge won't help that contingent of M fight the guy on siege; he's fighting them with burst damage concentrated at the right moment while he's whittling away their resources, and he's reapplying snares with seemingly every ability. Meanwhile, the remainder of the group is susceptible to the same bomb they'd get if they charged at the siege line-- a bomb will happen if they let their guard down, no question-- except they have fewer numbers to withstand that bomb. The same conditions as above will apply when the bomb hits; they don't have to worry about the burst damage from the siege if they split people off to occupy the dude on the ballista, but they also have fewer people in the fight. Plus, the pug that's wandered over in the meantime probably put another ballista down.

I'm aware that putting down siege makes the Small group vulnerable too. But you covered that, and you didn't cover that the Medium group faces a sticky situation when faced with siege at all. If Purge is able to hit all of them at once, they're not just gonna stand there and eat the siege, purging it and healing it while also purging the other effects they're taking while engaging the enemy group and also healing through all the regular non-siege damage like invincible walking gods. That's not a thing. There are so many reasons not to stand in one place for more than seconds at a time, beyond just getting sieged. But if siege is to function as a counter to the stationary "purge and heal and barrier through the damage" meta that doesn't even exist anymore, if we deserve to have counters to things (and we do!) then there deserves to be a fair counter to the siege tactic, because siege itself no longer even essentially serves as a a counter to anything; it's a thing we do to make more damage come out.

Namely, I would like my counter to be: the opportunity to move and re-position and spread out and not be endlessly, hopelessly riddled with status effects that do not have a cap, as opposed to our defensive capabilities, which do have a cap, and haven't even worked properly within the confines of that cap since that cap was introduced. No, we shouldn't be able to hit Purge forever and be fine; we also shouldn't be able to re-apply effects forever until our enemies are just standing in quicksand and can't actually physically react and use their brains to execute a maneuver to outplay us. We can't do the former, and we won't be able to do the former if the cap is lifted. But we've been doing the latter for a really long time, and it's gutted the playerbase.

This is a contrived scenario, the thing with the groups. I'm designing it a certain way to demonstrate the absurd complexity of the issue, the fact that the issue isn't simple enough to be condensed into bullet points, the fact that Purge hitting more than 6 people will not suddenly make siege irrelevant or cripple the possibility of successfully fighting outnumbered. I'm choosing certain variables to better illustrate my point, but the fact that there are variables which have been left unconsidered reinforces the complexity of the matter at hand.

Putting down siege is a measurable risk for Small groups fighting against Medium groups or Large (16-24) groups, I agree. But reacting to that siege, dealing with it, is a measurable risk for the group with a mild numerical advantage, a risk for the "ball group". And I should be faced with risk, with potential vulnerabilities: if I fight 10-12 of your guys with 16 of my guys, you deserve to measure your own group's risk and put down siege. It evens things out, offers an edge, rewards a tactical decision. I also deserve to be able to Purge, because my Purge does not cancel your siege; it mitigates it. The fight should not be as simple as me running you down with a numerical advantage, but I also shouldn't be powerless to combat a Deus Ex Machina made out of wood.

But @frozywozy , listen. My boundless yearning for a full-group Purge, my personal distaste for the state of siege, the nightmares I have about giant flaming arrows and sacks of rotting meat, they don't spring to me noggin because those darn 12 man groups mow me down with yonder ballistae, grr, fist shakes at air. Your group fighting my group, that's not a face-off that siege OR Purge is going to tip irrevocably; it could go either way, the advantage would tip back and forth, and a combination of factors would decide the outcome of that fracas.

If you beat me with a clever placement of siege, kudos, well played. You had a mild-to-medium disadvantage, and you turned it to your advantage, and it's phenomenal that the game allows us to do that, that the game occasionally does reward cleverness and creative thinking. I'd whisper you with respect and we'd shake hands and talk about it over the lunch on my dime that I swear to God is going to happen in a paragraph or three.

But that's not how siege functions most of the time, is it? Turning a mildly outnumbered fight around? It can do that, but it usually does something else. There's one really unrealistic element in the endless yarn I've laid out, one omission from the scenario that deserves to be torn to shreds:

In reality, siege almost never actually benefits the smaller group, because it renders a significantly larger group of significantly inferior skill impossible for the smaller group to defeat. The contrived, unrealistic fight of Small versus Medium, that one can go either way with the placement of siege. It levels things out a bit, puts Medium in a tough spot, that good ol' mildly advantaged M group who can't afford to just put down more siege than S has put down, because the more important stuff happens in the actual fight on the ground, as it were, and in any group with less than 20 people you have to be quite precise and thoughtful about where all your people are and what they are doing. That's cool, that's how it should be, and S&M are gonna have a tough imaginary fight, I kinda want to watch the imaginary Shadowplay. But it's not a realistic match-up.

The fights that are most often decided by siege are scaled up a bit from there, and the vulnerabilities you laid out inherent to the placement of siege disappear entirely once the group placing siege has enough numbers. What happens when a Medium group fights a Large group, or a Large group fights a multi-raid Zerg? Those are the fights we're looking at on Trueflame, those are the fights where siege most drastically shifts the balance -- not whatsoever in favor of the outnumbered group.

The Zerg can put down more siege than you or I can. They can spare the numbers. They can spread out so much more than we can, and they do spread out, they have learned to do that, it is reflexive now, because the real Zergs are vulnerable to "balling up" for reasons that have nothing to do with siege. They spread out because the "ball groups" like mine and like VE, we will pounce on their clump and explode them when given the chance. The real Zergs spread out to sow their wild siege, and it comes quite naturally to them, because they are the MCs of Amateur Hour here in Cyrodiil and it feels honest to mill around in a disorganized fashion, searching for a flat piece of ground at which they might plop.

They know all the flat spots, and they place as many machines as they can. They make a circle with them, and they stay there after their friends push forward to use trinkety things like weapons and spells.

Even in my ideal dream reality where Oprah hands out tax-free purges to my entire ball group-- us who are the true Oprah superfans, luckily in attendance at this live recording of her dearly missed daytime television show-- even with these hypothetical infinite purges, we can't just stand there and eat the siege. We can't eat it fighting you, either, but we can respond to it tactically, we can match it or escape it fighting you; the vulnerability of placing siege actually applies to you, because you do not have an infinity of mice to dedicate to left-clicking the ground. Most of your mice are for weapons and spells, as are mine. A few of mine are certainly clicking on Purge, which is not at any scale going to remove your rightful, risk-weighted, strategic attempt to gain and maintain an advantage.

But there is a sea of faces outside, a huge mess of people peppering a huge mess of wooden win machines. A page from Where's Waldo, set at a castle. They're not hopping off between shots, because they have nothing to worry about. The people outside who are not on siege are visibly assigning their champion points. One of them just meteor'ed an NPC. They do not deserve to win this, Frozle O'Dozle. Please give me my purge back.

(Over lunch, I will bring up the fact that Stephen King, in his terrific On Writing, advocates against taking breaks from your routine after you finish a project; set the work you just finished aside until you're ready to revise it, he says, but the day after that, start writing something else. Don't slack off or stall. I'm stalling anyway, looking for loopholes around the idea, but I found a way to fill my daily word count, and now I can goof off for a while without feeling guilty.)

I just finished reading this. You start your paragraph saying that you think the situation is much more complicated as it looks. Then you continue saying that you will elaborate into the multiple different scenarios involved with the use of sieges VS purges with all the different group sizes.

Yup! But the next sentence says that, on second thought I probably won't do that after all, because it would take too long. It's in the part that you quoted. Having had some time to reflect on my wording, I would not phrase it differently for any sum of money.

95% of your text talks about a small group facing a medium group. Now, when in my posts did I talk about a small group facing a medium group? Nowhere.

Nowhere; however, that is the only matchup I have seen or can even conceive of in which the smaller group is able to obtain an advantage over a larger group once siege enters the picture, so I figured I'd tease it out for you.

I've given my input on one player trying to do any impact sieging a 24men ballgroup spamming purges affecting the entire raid. We've been there before. I've seen it hundred times. It's been discussed by plenty of people giving strong and valid arguments from both sizes.

It seems a little unreasonable to me to suggest that one person should have an impact, by themselves, on a group of 24 people who know what they're doing! I honestly cannot tell if we agree about that based on this snippet (vagueness being karmic payback for my own, intentional, structural bait-and-switch?), but I assume we do not.

Something I truly appreciate about this game, something that makes it magical for me, is that the combat feels like you are on the ground fighting, instead of instructing your character to perform a bit of fighting on your behalf. It's extremely kinetic. I actually feel bad asking people to run countersiege, because I am robbing them of what I consider to be this game's primary joy. As such, I feel like it's much more reasonable that siege, while it should be powerful, and useful, and not rendered entirely useless by a single skill, should only be outright deadly when used in combination with a group fighting effectively on the ground, at a breach, wherever, in the fashion of heroes. There should at least be a sorc nearby.

Why should a man tipping a pot be able to perform epic wipes without the assistance of valiant warriors fighting skillfully with their weapons and spells? Why should eight men be able to do that, parked behind a siege reticle? Get most of your hands dirty. One man on oils, one man on meat, six men poised to battle foes as those foes enter the castle's extraordinary built-in choke point, ultimates at the ready and negate being one of them. We don't need 15 counter-siege; we have people running 15 counter-siege because it is more effective for most players than actually placing their skills against the enemy's skills in Temporarily Mortal Combat. I admit to having a philosophical opposition to the concept of siege singlehandedly wiping a group, but the more practical and balance oriented opposition requires little explanation: it is insane to want to be able to wipe a full group by tipping an oil pot onto them.

I remember the very last time I played with Moon Die (though I know at one point he dipped his toes back into the pool blue side), back in 1.6. He found himself manning a fire ballista in a keep defense, and he knew he had to extract himself from the game altogether. He didn't get any satisfaction out of fighting that way, and I think there's an extraordinary sense of honor in that.

A 24men ballgroup (Not medium) but full 24men organized stacked group spamming purges (you see them when they roll inside the breach, their whole group is flashing in pure and refreshing sunlight) is totally invincible to any incoming siege damage. No matter the amount of sieges you throw at them (2-3fire balistas, 2 meatbags, 3 oils, it doesn't matter. They don't die if purge affects the whole group. They roll on the flags and flip the keep without even dealing any damage if they want. They just have to stand in a tight ball on the flags under a siege shield, spamming purges, healing springs, healing ultis and ggwp.

In earlier times, maybe. But siege damage was increased (and lent new effects) in tandem with the purge nerf, the barrier nerf, the rapids nerf, the introduction of a myriad new ways to debuff your enemies, a wider array of methods to snare people to death, and most critically: camps, which are constant from both parties. A hundred things changed at once, rather than incrementally, and it tipped the scales too far. I know you believe that taking keeps should be an ordeal, and I do think that it should be harder than it used to be, but a handful of the changes I just mentioned could have been implemented at a time instead of in one foul swoop of offensive castrations; I guarantee you that a middle ground could have been reached that would make us both happy.

One thing that I know we'd both prefer: incentives to battle in places other than keeps and resources. We're seeing that rolled out as we speak, and while I haven't led a group since the patch (I will tonight!), I'm terribly excited about it even as I temper my expectations and understand it's not going to be implemented perfectly right off the bat. Honestly, if there were effective and reliable methods of starting a fight comparable in scope or intensity to the almost guaranteed blowout battle resulting from the siege of a keep, I suspect I would be less frustrated by what I consider to be overzealous tinkering with the mechanics of castle control, and you would be less adamant about the success rate of controlling a defensive position against anything less than a faction stack.

Which, of course, suggests another common ground for us: so duking it out at castles and keeps (also forts) has been the central impetus for combat for a long time. Yes, I think there should more objectives too, hang on. Considering that attacking The Giant Stone-Walled Areas Which Share Layouts but Have Different Names is the primary way to summon groups of people to fight you, I hate that it will often require the engagements of multiple large groups to succeed in an offensive siege, and while in theory I love the idea of sieges taking a really long time, I cannot imagine a reality in which we do not share a distaste for the massive stack on behalf of both offensive and defensive parties which becomes inevitable once enough time passes with a Big Old Stone-Walled Fortification flagged on the map.

People are going to flood to the place where the action is clearly telegraphed. Especially if they are solo, especially if they are a smaller or less experienced group. They're going to arrive quicker than anyone expects, they will come even if you politely suggest they make use of their separate bodies and independently functioning minds to go and do something else, and they will throw themselves at The Big Stone Thing until something else happens that makes it really hard to return to that place upon death. It's ugly to play through, it weighs down the server, your own faction will routinely infuriate you by doing it, and it reinforces horrible behavior patterns, foremost being "stacking with everyone else". Camps exacerbate the problem, a lack of legitimate campaign incentives exacerbates the problem, a dearth of seasoned guilds in every faction exacerbates the problem, and I know we disagree, but counter-siege exacerbates the problem as much as any other factor. You need a certain amount of bodies to ensure that someone makes it past the siege, that's just the situation the game has handed us, and it's hard to walk away from a siege that you started in the vain hope that things will turn out differently elsewhere.

Regarding the openfield scenarios, I've always said that larger groups should have a MAJOR advantage in any openfield battle. Small / Medium groups use choke points and LoS to their advantage against larger groups. If one faction deploys enough siege on a specific location, you either push into it and suicide most likely, or you accept the fact that you lost the tactical use of that specific location and move behind LoS. It is as simple as that.

I don't think it's quite as simple as that, but I also don't disagree with the fact that it's the case and that those are the primary options you are looking at in those scenarios; I don't believe I have suggested otherwise! But since I'm here, I'll swing away from balance and performance ideology and mention straight up that I think if the enemy group has enough people to lay down 5-10+ counter-siege and still have a force of weapon-and-spell-toting, not-whatsoever-sitting-down-at-a-lump-of-wood humanoid warriors on the premises who are substantial enough to pose a problem to your group if you make a swipe at their siege line, it's frickin' cowardly of them not to just take the numerical advantage that they would have even without the siege weaponry, and fight you like any honest member of society would prefer, using aforementioned swords and aforementioned spells.

Seriously. Larger groups would have a major advantage in open field even without siege being so powerful, as they should. Even with Purge restored to its rightful place as That One Support Skill Everyone Likes and Admires, they would still have that advantage. But these guys, the ones in the larger force, they would have to use their noggins, they'd have to fight well, even with their superior numbers. They would have to fight in a fashion more complex than clicking a button at the ground, and as a result, they would learn more from combat. They would become better warriors. None of the newer players are learning about the game, learning how to fight better for their groups or for their alliances, by relying so heavily on siege. It's rotting their brains, like sitcoms in the 1980s.

When I run with organized groups (Because I have done quite often recently), we are constantly fighting 24men ballgroups or multiple raids of different sized groups. Anytime we stay too long around the same locations, we will see a considerable amount of sieges being deployed. If we get to that point, it means that we haven't acted fast enough to burst down a considerable amount of them to control the territory. The leader will usually move the group behind LoS of any siege and relocate the battle in a safe environnement for us.

They don't just move their siege to a spot where they can hit you again? I am envious, because that means that our population is a lot dumber than yours.

So yes, the larger groups have more options to set siege down, but it is a matter of movement and burst that will determine if you can control the territory or if you have to submit and get the battle to the next area.

Burst we have; movement has been rendered a fantasy for the past quarter of a year or so, because too many things changed at once. I am definitely looking forward to playing tonight, though. Cheers, and I'll see you out there.

pandoraderomanus

Tested the purge after fix and found out that it only hits 6 people instead of the whole group as it is written in the tooltip. Not the same 6 people, but definitely not the whole group.