Do you feel like the insane amounts of AOE are ruining skilled PVP gameplay?

Nyladreas

I personally think that the amount of AOE we face in PVP is way out of hand and is a part of what makes this game extremely frustrating to play and drives a lot of players away from places like IC or Battlegrounds, especially smallscale or solo. Yes, Medium has shuffle, and there are a lot of class abilities which make dealing with AOE slightly easier or simply allow you to get away. That however leads to 2 situations:

A.) you either have to just run and never engage and purposely stay away from certain groups, if you're not tanky enough or get vastly outnumbered
B.) Attempt to focus on hit-and-run only, playstyle.
C.) you build around it, resulting in ridiculously long, disengaging fights

Look at the meta or high skill PVP gameplay. Everyone is a tank, first and foremost, because of the unbearable amounts of AOE, the ST burst alone can mostly be avoided, dodged, blocked. Most of AOE is straight up unavoidable, especially combined with stacking slow/snare/root/CC effects. A potential for actually skilled, timed, set-up kills diminishes the more we add AOEs and the more we build tanky. It makes PvP rather unsatisfying, other than getting your daily dose of dopamine from finishing a frustrating, anger-inducing fight. At least to me.

In most MMOs AoEs in PVP are usually very weak and near ineffective or useless for the damage purposes in 1v1 or up to 5v5 and even 10v10 or more, and only serve as utility of some sort - unless they are a form of class burst mechanic (like for example: Shalks - which is totally fine by me.). These AoEs are usually balanced and tuned so well so that regular, most often occuring, small scale PvP doesn't lose its skilled gameplay model, while actually becoming quite powerful in large group setting. Large groups are where the high numbers of stacked up AOEs infact do become useful. In ESO however, we're hitting this threshold already in groups of 3 and more players, and that's way out of hand.

My opinion anyways. Call me bad or call me a noob, maybe i don't understand anything. It's just how I've felt for the past + - year and a half, as AoEs have been slowly increasing in presence and strength. Also, imho, it's not really a problem of how many AoEs we can stack, rather than how most AoEs are hitting for nearly the same amount of damage as most single target abilities. They are only slightly weaker.

VaranisArano

I feel like ZOS once tried to cap AOE damage to fix performance.
Then they uncapped AOE damage to fix performance.
Then they nerfed most AOEs as part of their skill standardization and we got the DOT meta.
Then they've been walking that back as everyone went "Wow, the DOT meta isn't that much fun..."

Oh, and ZOS is also noticably resistant to balancing PVP separately from PVE through battlespirit, so any PVP changes to AOE will almost certainly impact PVE as well. Cue complaints about PVPers getting PVE nerfed again.

In other words, ZOS doesn't know what to do about AOEs either, but whatever they do to change it won't make anyone happy and will probably be reverted eventually.

OG_Kaveman

Other opinion.

lol "skilled" PVP gameplay in an mmo.

Major_Lag

Other opinion.

There are 2 major problems with AoEs in PvP:

1. Ballgroups use AoEs almost exclusively, because single target abilties frequently fail to work at all when the server is lagging hard - which is pretty much 100% of the time during Cyro primetime.
So even if they wanted to use ST abilities, it's actually impossible because they simply won't work.

Obviously, fixing the bloody game (mostly the servers?) would go a long way towards making ST abilities a more viable alternative for larger groups to use, instead of defaulting on AoEs as the only usable option.

2. Even in Xv1 situations, it is pretty much never a disadvantage to use AoEs instead of single target abilities.
Sure, the AoEs generally hit for less damage and tend to cost more than "comparable" ST spammables - but in a game like ESO with its limited bar space, you are heavily gimping yourself if you aren't running AoEs when you group up with the intent to fight other large groups.

ZOS experimented with this last year, nerfing AoE damage and greatly increasing the cost - and it was a dismal failure, as it did very little to affect ballgroups with their insane sustain, but it certainly was very disruptive to PvE DDs who used to rely on AoEs as a major part of their rotation (which, as it happens, was pretty much all of them).

Unfortunately, short of a "blanket rebalancing" of AoEs via Battle Spirit,I don't see any way to reduce the AoE spam in PvP without seriously hurting PvE endgame.
And it should also be obvious that ZOS will never, ever balance anything separately for PvE and PvP, because of some delusional notion that abilities should work the same way in both (spoiler alert: they don't, and never should).

Nyladreas

Yes, AOE should be toned down and server more as a utility.

OG_Kaveman wrote: »

lol "skilled" PVP gameplay in an mmo.

There's actually quite of bit of those. Just don't play most of the Korean ones, where theme preferred classes always get the "upper hand".

Kartalin

No, AOE is fine as it is.

Single target abilities do hit harder than AOEs. Have you tried increasing your damage?

Nyladreas

Yes, AOE should be toned down and server more as a utility.

Kartalin wrote: »

Single target abilities do hit harder than AOEs. Have you tried increasing your damage?

They hit only slightly harder than most AoE abilities actually. And I don't think my damage can really go any higher to behonest I am personally one of the very annoying AOE abusers, simply because it's that strong and it's rather stupid to not use them if you have the chance. It doesn't mean I feel good about it though. Never have, never will.

OG_Kaveman

Other opinion.

Nyladreas wrote: »

OG_Kaveman wrote: »

lol "skilled" PVP gameplay in an mmo.

There's actually quite of bit of those. Just don't play most of the Korean ones, where theme preferred classes always get the "upper hand".

any mmo is too random to be a truly skilled game, like a lot of the time it is just down to the armor you wear or the skills you choose to use you use. that is not skill as far as i care to look into video game skill. skill is like something from Halo 1-2-3(after those games, Halo became too random to even call skill based too), or Counterstrike.

hence, my lol "skilled" PVP gameplay.

Gilvoth

Yes, AOE should be toned down and server more as a utility.

after you explained it like you did, you kinda convinced me.
i think your right.

doomette

No, AOE is fine as it is.

AoEs do *not* need to be nerfed again. Whole PVE playstyles were hamstrung the last time they did that. Maybe if they did it through battle spirit, but if that’s not feasible, I’d rather deal with the AoEs as is in Cyro than see further nerfs.
Gods I’m sick of nerf threads...

DelosTheta

Other opinion.

Skilled? You mean hopping around like the Easter bunny? Like no one in the history of melee combat anywhere ever did...

GeorgeBlack

Yes, most of AOE should be removed from PVP.

0 skill involved.
Stack to crown.
1 button spam actions depending on purpose of build
0 targeting involved.

In other games strong AoEs have large cooldowns.
Short cooldown AoEs are weak.

People dont know what skilled combat is anymore. Both in pvp and pve, they just either rollface everything with AoE, not even looking at their targets, or use a rotation.

0 action/reaction

0 tactic

GeorgeBlack

Yes, most of AOE should be removed from PVP.

doomette wrote: »

AoEs do *not* need to be nerfed again. Whole PVE playstyles were hamstrung the last time they did that. Maybe if they did it through battle spirit, but if that’s not feasible, I’d rather deal with the AoEs as is in Cyro than see further nerfs.
Gods I’m sick of nerf threads...

A fine example of a mmorpg player that wants to rush through "trash mobs" until the boss stage.
0 adventure. Just a playstation 1 gameplay.
Stage 1 + boss
Stage 2 + boss
Stage 3 + boss
Finally boss.

Xarc

Man, reduce AOE and pve players will burn this forum

dazee

No, AOE is fine as it is.

I almost voted aoe should be stronger in pvp becuase of how silly I find this question, but decided to go with the real answer.

Heimpai

Just slap on brp dw like every stam class

Shantu

This "something is killing me in PVP...so something has to change" complaint is so old. The way combat is designed in ESO will NEVER be balanced!! Period. They've never done it and never will. It's like throwing a tomato and and apple in a blender hoping you'll create a nice tasting "tomapple". All you get is a mess that nobody wants to eat.

PVP need to be a complete separate game from PVE with it's own skills and gear. It's the only intelligent way of addressing the never-ending issues. But ZOS must feel they're too far down the rabbit hole to do the obvious thing.

doomette

No, AOE is fine as it is.

GeorgeBlack wrote: »

doomette wrote: »

AoEs do *not* need to be nerfed again. Whole PVE playstyles were hamstrung the last time they did that. Maybe if they did it through battle spirit, but if that’s not feasible, I’d rather deal with the AoEs as is in Cyro than see further nerfs.
Gods I’m sick of nerf threads...

A fine example of a mmorpg player that wants to rush through "trash mobs" until the boss stage.
0 adventure. Just a playstation 1 gameplay.
Stage 1 + boss
Stage 2 + boss
Stage 3 + boss
Finally boss.

Er, no, quite the opposite but good job assuming 👍

Iskiab

No, AOE is fine as it is.

I disagreed mainly because of BRP DW. If they ever nerf it aoe will take over imo.

Almost all weak aoe classes have either major evasion or are stam who can use BRP DW. Fitting it on your build is another matter, but it’s there.

Without strong aoe those zoo specs would take over, and magsorcs are ranged so should never get major evasion imo, it would be a further buff to those annoying zoo specs.

dazee

No, AOE is fine as it is.

Imagine how bad ball groups would become with less aoe. lol.

Mr_Walker

No, the inane amounts of CC combined with broken CC immunity are killing skilled gameplay.

TheFM

Yes, AOE should be toned down and server more as a utility.

I 100 percent believe that aoes need to be toned down. People dont even have to aim anymore tbh.

StormeReigns

No, AOE is fine as it is.

Take away the telegraphs increase the radius of all AoEs by 4meters, beef up the visuals and make AoEs feel and look like nukes! Or Don't.

IndianaJames7

No, AOE is fine as it is.

The only aoe I have slotted is caltrops and that’s pretty much just to counter nightblade cloak. They have already been nerfed so much that the only time they hurt is when you get hit by 10 at once from a ballzerg. But taters gunna find a way to Tate regardless, so let’s not be giving out nerfs here. Nerfing aoes won’t be changing much in PvP, but would be doing a disservice to the ones that are still effective in pve.

Langeston

Yes, AOE should be toned down and server more as a utility.

I"m not at all surprised by the results of this poll — people don't like having to aim. It tends to interfere with the fluidity of their preferred 1-button combo.

Kartalin wrote: »

Single target abilities do hit harder than AOEs. Have you tried increasing your damage?

Blastbones, Jabs, & Shalks would like to have a word with you.

relentless_turnip

No, AOE is fine as it is.

I think the biggest culprit for ruining pvp is proc sets. Free damage for showing up...
You can wear a defensive set and morkuldin and light attack your way to victory.
This is of course one example of many different set ups, that takes the skill out of combat.
That makes PVP instantly accessible for player that don't want to learn to fight.
You don't even have to worry about resource management as the proc is just free damage.

AOE is fine, I have never had a fight unless against ball groups and thought aoe is a problem.

relentless_turnip

No, AOE is fine as it is.

Langeston wrote: »

I"m not at all surprised by the results of this poll — people don't like having to aim. It tends to interfere with the fluidity of their preferred 1-button combo.

Kartalin wrote: »

Single target abilities do hit harder than AOEs. Have you tried increasing your damage?

Blastbones, Jabs, & Shalks would like to have a word with you.

Blastbones, Jabs and shalks do all hit harder than any aoe. Just look at the tooltips.
My blastbones for instance hits for 21K with 5.8k weapon damage... which is pretty low WD comparatively to others.

Urzigurumash

I'm indifferent to it.

relentless_turnip wrote: »

I think the biggest culprit for ruining pvp is proc sets. Free damage for showing up...
You can wear a defensive set and morkuldin and light attack your way to victory.
This is of course one example of many different set ups, that takes the skill out of combat.
That makes PVP instantly accessible for player that don't want to learn to fight.
You don't even have to worry about resource management as the proc is just free damage.

AOE is fine, I have never had a fight unless against ball groups and thought aoe is a problem.

Nerf Morkuldin huh? Well that didn't take long. Guess I'll be searching through my storage chests first thing once this patch is done.

They also need to address the free damage we get from flat bonus sets. Free damage!! You gotta pay for it in my book. Each cast of a damaging skill should prompt you for a quick shell game with Pacrooti to see how much it will cost you.

Rianai

No, AOE should be stronger in PVP

TheFM wrote: »

I 100 percent believe that aoes need to be toned down. People dont even have to aim anymore tbh.

The targeting system in this game is broken, reliably aiming at a player near to others is impossible. Using mainly aoe skills isn't a matter of not wanting to aim - it is a necessity to fight large numbers of enemies - and as such nerfs to aoe would only buff zergs
.

Tommy_The_Gun

Yes, AOE should be toned down and server more as a utility.

Tbh. It feels like people will always use AOE, no matter what (even if it will have lower dmg) simply because it is 100% guaranteed dmg. It can not be dodged or blocked, meaning that it will always hit. Looking at other side of the spectrum - single target abilities can be blocked, reducing dmg significantly or dodged - negating 100% of damage.

And with the current performance of the game, It is kinda clear that playing arround single target will always be in disadvantage . Heck, it may not be registerd at all lol.

Note: There was not such an option, so I voted on this one, but I simply think that single target abilities need "something". AOE are fine, but compared to single target - it is no brainer what to use.

Langeston

Yes, AOE should be toned down and server more as a utility.

I"m not at all surprised by the results of this poll.

relentless_turnip wrote: »

Langeston wrote: »

I"m not at all surprised by the results of this poll — people don't like having to aim. It tends to interfere with the fluidity of their preferred 1-button combo.

Katalin wrote: »

Single target abilities do hit harder than AOEs. Have you tried increasing your damage?

Blastbones, Jabs, & Shalks would like to have a word with you.

Blastbones, Jabs and shalks do all hit harder than any aoe. Just look at the tooltips.
My blastbones for instance hits for 21K with 5.8k weapon damage... which is pretty low WD comparatively to others.

I think you misunderstood what I was saying. @Kartalin said that "single target abilities do hit harder than AOEs" and I was simply showing that that isn't necessarily the case. Blastbones, Jabs, and Shalks are all AOEs. My point is that they're AOEs that hit harder than single target abilities, and two of them even have Major Defile/Major Fracture attached to them — debuffs that ZOS stripped from Nightblade single-target abilities because they were "OP."