Earthgore is Overperforming

Thogard

So on PC NA on Sunday we had another GvG event where the teams get together and have fair and even fights. It’s a great way to make friends with people you normally don’t talk with, and a great way to see how well your group does in a controlled environment (read: no random NBs spamming snipe half way through the fight)

So I was in the 6v6 bracket and we had a ton of fun. We learned long ago that we had to ban earthgore or the fights wouldnt end... in anything less than 8v8, all it takes is one or two earthgores to completely counter an entire team’s coordinated ult dump burst (Talking about DBoS / leap / nova, not the PB AOE dots like destro ult, bats, and northern storm). And against a semi-competent team with healers that stagger resto ults, those ult dump bursts are the only way to bring someone down. And yes, that’s considering the fact that they have a 50% defile on them when the EG is proccing.

So we had fun in our bracket. Then we watched the 12v12 bracket...

The 12v12s are the destro ball groups that we all love to hate on.

It was interesting to watch because of how integral earthgore was in their setups. One team would throw up their proxies, charge in, activate destro ults, and the other team would try to build ult and stand in earthgores. Healing was important, but these healers weren’t popping BoLs nearly quick enough to survive the big AOE damage... the BOL spam (and resto ult and remembrance) was really just to fill the gaps in between earthgore procs.

What the fights really boiled down to was this.. can these teams get their ult up for another bomb BEFORE the enemy’s earthgores had a chance to reset? I’ve been talking with a few of the GMs and ult reduction and ult gen seems to be the primary focus because outside of earthgore or remembrance it’s just impossible to heal through those stacked destros.

But if both teams are doing the same thing, how do you outplay?
By wearing more earthgores.

The whole thing was a destro vs earthgore contest. When a team was able to do more destros before the earthgores reset, they win. The counter? Wear more Earthgores. Whether you’re Two good teams or two bad teams doesn’t matter. Whether you’re Stam in a coord burst setup or mag in a PB AOE DOT bomb setup doesn’t matter. Barring a significant skill difference between the two teams, the win goes to the team with more earthgores, because they’re able to counter more of their enemies’ bursts that would otherwise kill them.

The fact that the “winner” across ALL skill levels of PvP is determined by who wears more of a particular item indicates that that item is significantly over-performing... and that item is Earthgore.
note: (by all skill levels I mean new teams vs other new teams and elite teams vs other elite teams).

I know I’ve whined about NBs and stamdens a lot lately, but if ZOS has to pick just one thing to nerf, please nerf earthgore. I wouldn’t even have to think about that choice.

No set should determine who wins or loses simply by how many people wear it the way that earthgore does, but it is especially unbalanced if the set requires absolutely no skill, timing, or positioning to use effectively.

If you had a magplar without EG, and an AFK Stam nb wearing earthgore, you’d probably pick the guy wearing EG for a GvG.

That’s not ok. And I haven’t even gotten into the p2w aspect of it.

del9

But they are nerfing earthgore. Doubling the heal duration I believe. Thoughts on that?

Kartalin

Fwiw they did announce that it was changed to a 6 second HoT instead of 3 seconds. Same total healing over double the duration. I don’t know if that’s enough of a nerf to balance it though until we see it in action.

Also worth mentioning that the primary heal in these groups is healing springs not BoL, in my experience at least.

Thogard

That’s news to me.

I’d rather it have a Delay though.

Where is the announcement? I scanned the patch notes and couldn’t find anything

Kartalin

It’s part of the 4.0.0 patch but Gina added the note the day after because they forgot to include it initially.

Rohamad_Ali

Now this is how you write a feedback post . Well done Thogard . This is a set that is over performing . Has been for awhile and you wrote your analysis in a clear understandable way with facts to back it up .

arkansas_ESO

@Thogard

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

Hi all, we ran across some missed patch notes that we'll be adding to the original post, but wanted to call them out here so it's clear what got added:

Itemization Balance
Item Sets

• Earthgore: This item set now heals for the same amount over 6 seconds instead of 3 seconds.
  Developer Comment:
  Earthgore was too bursty for a strong AOE heal. This change will keep the high power heal, but make it less destructive in PvP gameplay, where an entire group is near invulnerable over the 3 seconds that the old Earthgore would be activated.
• Hiricine's Veneer: This item set now reduces the cost of all Stamina abilities by 4% instead of increasing Stamina Recovery for you and your group by 12%.

montiferus

Well said Thogard. Could not agree more. It is so frustrating to get a person into execute multiple times only to get bailed out by earth gore.

ascan7

OP is right, Earthgore is overperfoming
Earthgore function should be providing an incredibible heal, but only few times because of the long cooldown.
The problem is that multiple Earthgore completely change its function. Considering that Earthgore has a duration of 3 seconds and a cooldown of 35, in an hypotetical scenery were 12 people have all Earthgore and are able to proc it at will, they would have 100% Earthgore proc. That's incredibly broken.
Realistically you can do that, but till the concept "awesome heal every 30 seconds" gets throw out the window.
Imho a god way to nerf Earthgore by keeping its original function the same would be add some sort to internal cooldown for every target hit by Heartgore.
What i mean is this: if you get healed by Heartgore, you can't get healed by Earthgore, even another one, for 30-35 seconds. This would be added to the normal cooldown.

Toc de Malsvi

I at last agree with something you posted. I have run it with Bow/Bow(low weapon dmg) No-CP BGs with pugs. Only active heal I have for allies was vigor, I topped 250k healing regularly.

Normally with troll king I'm sitting at 160k in match where I get to heal a lot. EarthGore is insane burst healing without having to invest as a healer. I love it, but its definitely overperforming.

Thogard

Toc de Malsvi wrote: »

I at last agree with something you posted. I have run it with Bow/Bow(low weapon dmg) No-CP BGs with pugs. Only active heal I have for allies was vigor, I topped 250k healing regularly.

Normally with troll king I'm sitting at 160k in match where I get to heal a lot. EarthGore is insane burst healing without having to invest as a healer. I love it, but its definitely overperforming.

Thats not true. I think we also agreed about getting CP out of BGs.

But if you use draining shot, odds are you also use the draining shot exploit, so if I see you in game and you do that, I will bag you

Mihael

Toc de Malsvi wrote: »

I at last agree with something you posted. I have run it with Bow/Bow(low weapon dmg) No-CP BGs with pugs. Only active heal I have for allies was vigor, I topped 250k healing regularly.

Normally with troll king I'm sitting at 160k in match where I get to heal a lot. EarthGore is insane burst healing without having to invest as a healer. I love it, but its definitely overperforming.

Yeah it’s so sad lately I’ve been seeing more people use earth gore in bgs it’s even worse to see stam players use it lol

HaroniNDeorum

So much salt to feed earths pop for 1 year

NegativeVibes

Give it something crazy like a 2-3 minute cool down and ai think it would be ok

Thogard

NegativeVibes wrote: »

Give it something crazy like a 2-3 minute cool down and ai think it would be ok

I’d rather it have a 2-3s delay so that the recipients have to think and make choices about whether they want to stay put and wait for the heal, or kite and miss the heal

Kartalin

Even a 1s delay would have potentially serious consequences. But I like the idea of a build up to the healing as a fix.

Edit:
Looking again at 6 second HoT versus 3 second: This takes it from 5k health/sec to 2.5k health per sec. That's pretty significant when you consider that 2.5k health won't necessarily bring someone out of execute range where 5k health frequently will. The fact that it proc'd in the first place means someone was already under 50%.

Waffennacht

Curious...

Doubled the healing time you say?

Couldn't running essentially double the earthgores negate that Nerf entirely?

Really well written post. From what I gathered, essentially 1-2 EGs have a massive impact on the groups.

Should be easy to up that to 2-4.

Unfortunately, I find the whole 12v12 etc pretty weak. Seems more of just ult than anything else

Thogard

Kartalin wrote: »

Even a 1s delay would have potentially serious consequences. But I like the idea of a build up to the healing as a fix.

Exactly! It would make the set require skillful play, or at least a modicum of forethought to use effectively.

Thogard

Waffennacht wrote: »

Curious...

Doubled the healing time you say?

Couldn't running essentially double the earthgores negate that Nerf entirely?

Really well written post. From what I gathered, essentially 1-2 EGs have a massive impact on the groups.

Should be easy to up that to 2-4.

Unfortunately, I find the whole 12v12 etc pretty weak. Seems more of just ult than anything else

The problem is that it is even more effective against small scale groups that use highly focused burst windows instead of the easier-to-use “hit destro ult, press w” style of play. Earthgore negates burst, which is effective a every level of play, but increases in effectiveness as the group’s get smaller and smaller.

When I get home I’ll link the vids of the 12v12s. 4 earthgores per team is an understatement.

www.twitch.tv/videos/253482417
small scale starts around 1:00:00, large scale stuff starts around 1:15:00

Thogard

double post

Mureel

ascan7 wrote: »

OP is right, Earthgore is overperfoming
Earthgore function should be providing an incredibible heal, but only few times because of the long cooldown.
The problem is that multiple Earthgore completely change its function. Considering that Earthgore has a duration of 3 seconds and a cooldown of 35, in an hypotetical scenery were 12 people have all Earthgore and are able to proc it at will, they would have 100% Earthgore proc. That's incredibly broken.
Realistically you can do that, but till the concept "awesome heal every 30 seconds" gets throw out the window.
Imho a god way to nerf Earthgore by keeping its original function the same would be add some sort to internal cooldown for every target hit by Heartgore.
What i mean is this: if you get healed by Heartgore, you can't get healed by Earthgore, even another one, for 30-35 seconds. This would be added to the normal cooldown.

They need to just remove ALL 2 pc from PVP then maybe people will finally stop crying - these threads just bore me.

Thogard wrote: »

Toc de Malsvi wrote: »

I at last agree with something you posted. I have run it with Bow/Bow(low weapon dmg) No-CP BGs with pugs. Only active heal I have for allies was vigor, I topped 250k healing regularly.

Normally with troll king I'm sitting at 160k in match where I get to heal a lot. EarthGore is insane burst healing without having to invest as a healer. I love it, but its definitely overperforming.

Thats not true. I think we also agreed about getting CP out of BGs.

But if you use draining shot, odds are you also use the draining shot exploit, so if I see you in game and you do that, I will bag you

I just made my first bow character (other than my one in 2014 which changed to a magblade in a couple days!) - IDK any exploits - but I don't want to accidentally do this ever - must it be purposefully done? Or can it accidentally happen?

Please tell or pm me details?

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO

I can assure you the result would be the same regardless of earthgore usage.
Your account of the fight isn't actually what happens.


You can check past posts where I suggested earthgore should cancel out itself during its "negate ground effects" so overlapping EG procs wouldn't double heal.


Imo it should remove more than 1 effect from the ground as that was the unique aspect which actually gave something interesting

You're more then welcome to get 12 afk stamblade in EG and fight a group without EG. Can easily say who will win

Thogard

Mureel wrote: »

ascan7 wrote: »

OP is right, Earthgore is overperfoming
Earthgore function should be providing an incredibible heal, but only few times because of the long cooldown.
The problem is that multiple Earthgore completely change its function. Considering that Earthgore has a duration of 3 seconds and a cooldown of 35, in an hypotetical scenery were 12 people have all Earthgore and are able to proc it at will, they would have 100% Earthgore proc. That's incredibly broken.
Realistically you can do that, but till the concept "awesome heal every 30 seconds" gets throw out the window.
Imho a god way to nerf Earthgore by keeping its original function the same would be add some sort to internal cooldown for every target hit by Heartgore.
What i mean is this: if you get healed by Heartgore, you can't get healed by Earthgore, even another one, for 30-35 seconds. This would be added to the normal cooldown.

They need to just remove ALL 2 pc from PVP then maybe people will finally stop crying - these threads just bore me.

Thogard wrote: »

Toc de Malsvi wrote: »

I at last agree with something you posted. I have run it with Bow/Bow(low weapon dmg) No-CP BGs with pugs. Only active heal I have for allies was vigor, I topped 250k healing regularly.

Normally with troll king I'm sitting at 160k in match where I get to heal a lot. EarthGore is insane burst healing without having to invest as a healer. I love it, but its definitely overperforming.

Thats not true. I think we also agreed about getting CP out of BGs.

But if you use draining shot, odds are you also use the draining shot exploit, so if I see you in game and you do that, I will bag you

I just made my first bow character (other than my one in 2014 which changed to a magblade in a couple days!) - IDK any exploits - but I don't want to accidentally do this ever - must it be purposefully done? Or can it accidentally happen?

Please tell or pm me details?

Made a video just for you. i'll give it its own thread

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GsMhC1d7AfQ

rfennell_ESO

The real fix for it would be:

(2 items) When you heal a friendly target that is under 50% Health you conjure a pool of quenching blood underneath them, which soaks up enemy placed effects and all other friendly earthgore effects instantly and heals all friendly targets in the area for 30,000 Health over 3 seconds. This effect can occur once every 35 seconds.

Toc de Malsvi

Thogard wrote: »

Mureel wrote: »

ascan7 wrote: »

OP is right, Earthgore is overperfoming
Earthgore function should be providing an incredibible heal, but only few times because of the long cooldown.
The problem is that multiple Earthgore completely change its function. Considering that Earthgore has a duration of 3 seconds and a cooldown of 35, in an hypotetical scenery were 12 people have all Earthgore and are able to proc it at will, they would have 100% Earthgore proc. That's incredibly broken.
Realistically you can do that, but till the concept "awesome heal every 30 seconds" gets throw out the window.
Imho a god way to nerf Earthgore by keeping its original function the same would be add some sort to internal cooldown for every target hit by Heartgore.
What i mean is this: if you get healed by Heartgore, you can't get healed by Earthgore, even another one, for 30-35 seconds. This would be added to the normal cooldown.

They need to just remove ALL 2 pc from PVP then maybe people will finally stop crying - these threads just bore me.

Thogard wrote: »

Toc de Malsvi wrote: »

I at last agree with something you posted. I have run it with Bow/Bow(low weapon dmg) No-CP BGs with pugs. Only active heal I have for allies was vigor, I topped 250k healing regularly.

Normally with troll king I'm sitting at 160k in match where I get to heal a lot. EarthGore is insane burst healing without having to invest as a healer. I love it, but its definitely overperforming.

Thats not true. I think we also agreed about getting CP out of BGs.

But if you use draining shot, odds are you also use the draining shot exploit, so if I see you in game and you do that, I will bag you

I just made my first bow character (other than my one in 2014 which changed to a magblade in a couple days!) - IDK any exploits - but I don't want to accidentally do this ever - must it be purposefully done? Or can it accidentally happen?

Please tell or pm me details?

Made a video just for you. i'll give it its own thread

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GsMhC1d7AfQ

This doesn't benefit me, and I'm struggling to see how it could really benefit someone else other than trying to knock someone off a cliff. You lose an incredible amount of stamina doing this and you gain no healing and little to no damage. The heal of draining shot is super important for me and highly underrated. You lose the heal by doing this, it just burns your stam for nothing.

SodanTok

Thogard wrote: »

Mureel wrote: »

ascan7 wrote: »

OP is right, Earthgore is overperfoming
Earthgore function should be providing an incredibible heal, but only few times because of the long cooldown.
The problem is that multiple Earthgore completely change its function. Considering that Earthgore has a duration of 3 seconds and a cooldown of 35, in an hypotetical scenery were 12 people have all Earthgore and are able to proc it at will, they would have 100% Earthgore proc. That's incredibly broken.
Realistically you can do that, but till the concept "awesome heal every 30 seconds" gets throw out the window.
Imho a god way to nerf Earthgore by keeping its original function the same would be add some sort to internal cooldown for every target hit by Heartgore.
What i mean is this: if you get healed by Heartgore, you can't get healed by Earthgore, even another one, for 30-35 seconds. This would be added to the normal cooldown.

They need to just remove ALL 2 pc from PVP then maybe people will finally stop crying - these threads just bore me.

Thogard wrote: »

Toc de Malsvi wrote: »

I at last agree with something you posted. I have run it with Bow/Bow(low weapon dmg) No-CP BGs with pugs. Only active heal I have for allies was vigor, I topped 250k healing regularly.

Normally with troll king I'm sitting at 160k in match where I get to heal a lot. EarthGore is insane burst healing without having to invest as a healer. I love it, but its definitely overperforming.

Thats not true. I think we also agreed about getting CP out of BGs.

But if you use draining shot, odds are you also use the draining shot exploit, so if I see you in game and you do that, I will bag you

I just made my first bow character (other than my one in 2014 which changed to a magblade in a couple days!) - IDK any exploits - but I don't want to accidentally do this ever - must it be purposefully done? Or can it accidentally happen?

Please tell or pm me details?

Made a video just for you. i'll give it its own thread

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GsMhC1d7AfQ

I have been getting some messages from people informing me about my 'accidental' exploiting, thinking I will just stop using the only CC i got. 6 months and counting of this bug. With PTS of new patch and it still isnt fixed. Very low awareness. Must be exploited to be fixed

a1i3nz

They need to completely remove this set.

Seriously everyone and their mother is running it and we already have a cancerous amount of healers. Why do you guys add this kind of crap at all? Like when you added destro ult, and proxi det, and dozens of other obviously terrible sets/abilities that were obviously not balanced from the go.

Thank you OP for articulating the problems. I'm blunt. And you shouldn't even have to make such a well thought out post because everyone knows when they add something horrible they just let the imbalance happen for a while so scrubs can have their time.

Thogard

Toc de Malsvi wrote: »

Thogard wrote: »

Mureel wrote: »

ascan7 wrote: »

OP is right, Earthgore is overperfoming
Earthgore function should be providing an incredibible heal, but only few times because of the long cooldown.
The problem is that multiple Earthgore completely change its function. Considering that Earthgore has a duration of 3 seconds and a cooldown of 35, in an hypotetical scenery were 12 people have all Earthgore and are able to proc it at will, they would have 100% Earthgore proc. That's incredibly broken.
Realistically you can do that, but till the concept "awesome heal every 30 seconds" gets throw out the window.
Imho a god way to nerf Earthgore by keeping its original function the same would be add some sort to internal cooldown for every target hit by Heartgore.
What i mean is this: if you get healed by Heartgore, you can't get healed by Earthgore, even another one, for 30-35 seconds. This would be added to the normal cooldown.

They need to just remove ALL 2 pc from PVP then maybe people will finally stop crying - these threads just bore me.

Thogard wrote: »

Toc de Malsvi wrote: »

I at last agree with something you posted. I have run it with Bow/Bow(low weapon dmg) No-CP BGs with pugs. Only active heal I have for allies was vigor, I topped 250k healing regularly.

Normally with troll king I'm sitting at 160k in match where I get to heal a lot. EarthGore is insane burst healing without having to invest as a healer. I love it, but its definitely overperforming.

Thats not true. I think we also agreed about getting CP out of BGs.

But if you use draining shot, odds are you also use the draining shot exploit, so if I see you in game and you do that, I will bag you

I just made my first bow character (other than my one in 2014 which changed to a magblade in a couple days!) - IDK any exploits - but I don't want to accidentally do this ever - must it be purposefully done? Or can it accidentally happen?

Please tell or pm me details?

Made a video just for you. i'll give it its own thread

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GsMhC1d7AfQ

This doesn't benefit me, and I'm struggling to see how it could really benefit someone else other than trying to knock someone off a cliff. You lose an incredible amount of stamina doing this and you gain no healing and little to no damage. The heal of draining shot is super important for me and highly underrated. You lose the heal by doing this, it just burns your stam for nothing.

It's more of a problem in group play as it removes the victim's ability to use countermeasures. You lock down the opponent, your groupmate kills him.

ToRelax

ascan7 wrote: »

OP is right, Earthgore is overperfoming
Earthgore function should be providing an incredibible heal, but only few times because of the long cooldown.
The problem is that multiple Earthgore completely change its function. Considering that Earthgore has a duration of 3 seconds and a cooldown of 35, in an hypotetical scenery were 12 people have all Earthgore and are able to proc it at will, they would have 100% Earthgore proc. That's incredibly broken.
Realistically you can do that, but till the concept "awesome heal every 30 seconds" gets throw out the window.
Imho a god way to nerf Earthgore by keeping its original function the same would be add some sort to internal cooldown for every target hit by Heartgore.
What i mean is this: if you get healed by Heartgore, you can't get healed by Earthgore, even another one, for 30-35 seconds. This would be added to the normal cooldown.

Honestly, I think there just shouldn't be a set providing an AoE burst heal/very powerful HoT that in essence funtions as a burst heal.
A set proc that saves one player when they would otherwise die is one thing, a proc that saves a group a whole other one.

Thogard

ToRelax wrote: »

ascan7 wrote: »

OP is right, Earthgore is overperfoming
Earthgore function should be providing an incredibible heal, but only few times because of the long cooldown.
The problem is that multiple Earthgore completely change its function. Considering that Earthgore has a duration of 3 seconds and a cooldown of 35, in an hypotetical scenery were 12 people have all Earthgore and are able to proc it at will, they would have 100% Earthgore proc. That's incredibly broken.
Realistically you can do that, but till the concept "awesome heal every 30 seconds" gets throw out the window.
Imho a god way to nerf Earthgore by keeping its original function the same would be add some sort to internal cooldown for every target hit by Heartgore.
What i mean is this: if you get healed by Heartgore, you can't get healed by Earthgore, even another one, for 30-35 seconds. This would be added to the normal cooldown.

Honestly, I think there just shouldn't be a set providing an AoE burst heal/very powerful HoT that in essence funtions as a burst heal.
A set proc that saves one player when they would otherwise die is one thing, a proc that saves a group a whole other one.

The two piece set that heals a whole group actually has a significantly higher delve than the 5 piece sets that heal a single wearer. It also has a Shorter cooldown and easier trigger conditions

Morgul667

Nice post

Earthgore is clearly OP

It completely changes the course of a fight as you explained it.

Hope they can truely change it