So you want to break balls, ZOS?

illutian

Since Convergence and Hrothgar are totally useless at doing 'the title'.

Why don't you, instead, make it so Battle Spirit's damage reduction is reduced by 10 percentage points per ally that is within 5m of you. Meaning if you have 5 allies around you, you will have 0% damage reduction and take the full damage of abilities from enemies.

((The numbers don't have to be exact. But if ZOS wants to stop ball groups this is the only way. New sets won't work.))



....or, ya know...you could just not do anything and continue to let the ball groups run around and destroy everything. And continue making sets that are suppose to "break up large groups", but actually end up being used by said groups to delete enemy.

----

Note: This post is made after watching about 15+ AD try and take out something like 20 DC in a ball. None of the ball members have died for the past 5min as they've easily deleted swathes of AD. So ya. Balls are still just fine and ZOS has no idea what they're doing when it comes to countering players.

auz

To be fair, zos doesn't know what they are doing with pvp. I don't think anyone was suprised they bought out ridiculous new sets to "balance" pvp and close the skill gap. I think even zos would be surprised with how much they broke it. I can't believe they thought " how about we make a set that grabs everyone nearby and stacks them up in a neat pile, make it do ridiculous damage, and let's not make the set apply cc immunity. Ball groups will never be able to abuse that." Or, even worse, they did think of that and released it anyway into a game already struggling with performance issues.

ResidentContrarian

Buffing siege would be a great start. It's silly that only cold stones are any good at eliminating groups...

neferpitou73

illutian wrote: »

Since Convergence and Hrothgar are totally useless at doing 'the title'.

Why don't you, instead, make it so Battle Spirit's damage reduction is reduced by 10 percentage points per ally that is within 5m of you. Meaning if you have 5 allies around you, you will have 0% damage reduction and take the full damage of abilities from enemies.

((The numbers don't have to be exact. But if ZOS wants to stop ball groups this is the only way. New sets won't work.))



....or, ya know...you could just not do anything and continue to let the ball groups run around and destroy everything. And continue making sets that are suppose to "break up large groups", but actually end up being used by said groups to delete enemy.

----

Note: This post is made after watching about 15+ AD try and take out something like 20 DC in a ball. None of the ball members have died for the past 5min as they've easily deleted swathes of AD. So ya. Balls are still just fine and ZOS has no idea what they're doing when it comes to countering players.

Were these really the numbers? Because I don't really see a problem with 15 randos not being able to take out 20 grouped and organized players? If it were 40v 20 you'd have a point. And sorry with the amount of zerging AD does lately I have zero sympathy.

GuildedLilly

If you're noticing an uptick on AD zergers lately-- the alliance LEAST likely to group, and they're having difficulty killing a ball--I can pretty much guarantee a lot of them are PVErs trying to level their Alliance war skills ever since ZOS announced DM only BGs.

It's the law of unintended consequences. PVErs have to level Alliance if they want to become Tanks, Healers, or have stam builds--and ZOS just killed the best way to do so by deleting Objective BGs. They won't go to IC because words cannot express how much they HATE the gankers there and being forced to feed them every PVP event, sooooo... that leaves Cyrodil.

Organized ball groups? Happy hunting. There's going to be a lot of squishies running around until either objective BGs are back, or PVErs shafted by the recent change get their skills unlocked.

DrSlaughtr

ResidentContrarian wrote: »

Buffing siege would be a great start. It's silly that only cold stones are any good at eliminating groups...

I've been saying this for years.

Add a new seige with like a 5 meter rage but multiply damage for each target hit.

Make it a catapult so you can't easily murder on ram.

Ball groups survive mostly by using non destructible objects to negate player attacks. Let them stand in a tower building ultimate. Fire that seige into it and watch them be killed or forced out.

illutian

neferpitou73 wrote: »

Were these really the numbers? Because I don't really see a problem with 15 randos not being able to take out 20 grouped and organized players? If it were 40v 20 you'd have a point. And sorry with the amount of zerging AD does lately I have zero sympathy.

I'm just taking a guesstimate based how how many players kinda registered with my mind. I could name-drop, but that is near-100% frowned upon. I'll just say, they're very good at what they do, and we pretty much can't stop them until they get bored and let us kill them (to bloodport).

And this would benefit all three factions...I don't think you should be able to zerg round.


My biggest annoyance with ZOS is they made these sets but there's potions (or are they poisons...haven't checked which it is) that grants immunity to CC. So that completely nullifies Dark Con and any actions that 'pull'.

And in Zone, someone was saying how Hrothgar's Chill hits them for about 4k despite having a crap-ton of Resist. But obliterates someone with next to none. Even though HC's damage is suppose to be based off the amount of Spell and Phy Resistance.

TheEndBringer wrote: »

Ball groups survive mostly by using non destructible objects to negate player attacks. Let them stand in a tower building ultimate. Fire that seige into it and watch them be killed or forced out.

The siege would need to be a 'quick fire' type. Ball Groups usually run with a permanent sprint.

Plus, siege means you can't block. And even with the changes coming to Dark Con. You are just a sitting a duck waiting to be yoinked off the siege and killed.

----

This is why reducing Battle Spirit's damage reduction is, imo (obviously), the best option. It could even be for the first 5 near you, you don't suffer any deduction. But from 6 and on? Ten percentage points deducted from the Damage Reduction.

This would allow for 'commando groups' while still discouraging zergs running around.

Like I said, it's up for tweaking. But that damage reduction from Battle Spirit allows large groups to move unhindered and unstopped.

xxslam48xxb14_ESO

Give us a stamina proximity detonation or make it scale off weapon power and I will clean up the ball groups. Mag nbs are too weak to do what needs to be done.

Hymzir

Remove cast time from Inevitable Detonation.

That's all you really need to do.
It hits pretty hard as is, but the problem is that it hits so rarely since balls are on permanent speed and just run out of range before you can cast the damn thing. This is also why siege doesn't work against balls.

I'd also nerf the base damage, make it basically useless when it hits 4 or less, and then ramp up the damage multiplier so it hits 50% harder than now, when it hits 8 or more.

Do that and people will spread out. And people will also re-think the idea of running in those pass by AOE dependant balls glued to the butt of the crown.

DrSlaughtr

illutian wrote: »

neferpitou73 wrote: »

Were these really the numbers? Because I don't really see a problem with 15 randos not being able to take out 20 grouped and organized players? If it were 40v 20 you'd have a point. And sorry with the amount of zerging AD does lately I have zero sympathy.

I'm just taking a guesstimate based how how many players kinda registered with my mind. I could name-drop, but that is near-100% frowned upon. I'll just say, they're very good at what they do, and we pretty much can't stop them until they get bored and let us kill them (to bloodport).

And this would benefit all three factions...I don't think you should be able to zerg round.


My biggest annoyance with ZOS is they made these sets but there's potions (or are they poisons...haven't checked which it is) that grants immunity to CC. So that completely nullifies Dark Con and any actions that 'pull'.

And in Zone, someone was saying how Hrothgar's Chill hits them for about 4k despite having a crap-ton of Resist. But obliterates someone with next to none. Even though HC's damage is suppose to be based off the amount of Spell and Phy Resistance.

TheEndBringer wrote: »

Ball groups survive mostly by using non destructible objects to negate player attacks. Let them stand in a tower building ultimate. Fire that seige into it and watch them be killed or forced out.

The siege would need to be a 'quick fire' type. Ball Groups usually run with a permanent sprint.

Plus, siege means you can't block. And even with the changes coming to Dark Con. You are just a sitting a duck waiting to be yoinked off the siege and killed.

----

This is why reducing Battle Spirit's damage reduction is, imo (obviously), the best option. It could even be for the first 5 near you, you don't suffer any deduction. But from 6 and on? Ten percentage points deducted from the Damage Reduction.

This would allow for 'commando groups' while still discouraging zergs running around.

Like I said, it's up for tweaking. But that damage reduction from Battle Spirit allows large groups to move unhindered and unstopped.

First off, I set meat bags and scatter shots on flags all the time. You just watch for them to push out then roll away. Oh they hit me with a DC? Block and Dodge well usually save you. If it doesn't? Who cares. You did your part for the war!

The issue is neither of those options do enough damage to hurt them. They just immediately heal out of what gets through their defenses.

Secondly if you put a debuff in Battle Spirit to hurt all groups you'll tick off pretty much everyone and further encourage players to solo, which is already a huge issue as it is.

neferpitou73

xxslam48xxb14_ESO wrote: »

Give us a stamina proximity detonation or make it scale off weapon power and I will clean up the ball groups. Mag nbs are too weak to do what needs to be done.

Proxy now scales of weapon damage. At least to my knowledge

illutian

Hymzir wrote: »

Remove cast time from Inevitable Detonation.

That's all you really need to do.
It hits pretty hard as is, but the problem is that it hits so rarely since balls are on permanent speed and just run out of range before you can cast the damn thing. This is also why siege doesn't work against balls.

I'd also nerf the base damage, make it basically useless when it hits 4 or less, and then ramp up the damage multiplier so it hits 50% harder than now, when it hits 8 or more.

Do that and people will spread out. And people will also re-think the idea of running in those pass by AOE dependant balls glued to the butt of the crown.

Honestly, I'd just change it so the one morph is still 'you become a bomb'. But then the other one, instead of 'it blows up on dispell' it becomes 'applies to 2 other nearby targets'.

TheEndBringer wrote: »

Secondly if you put a debuff in Battle Spirit to hurt all groups you'll tick off pretty much everyone and further encourage players to solo, which is already a huge issue as it is.

That's why I mention it doesn't have be to 100% loss. But that ~50% damage reduction is insane when you have 20 players spamming heals...even though those heals are reduced by ~50% as well.

My guess is most ball groups run at least 1 tank set per person since individual DPS isn't an issue.

Side Note: Cyrodiil was just as lively without Battle Spirit 'back in the day'. ...and people still die just as quick (but that's another topic).

AFAIK, this is the only thing that hasn't been tried. They tried buffing Siege Damage awhile ago. They tried new sets. They tried reworking Champion Points. They tried buffing/nerfing abilities. Balls keep rolling over people though.

Thoragaal

illutian wrote: »

....or, ya know...you could just not do anything and continue to let the ball groups run around and destroy everything. And continue making sets that are suppose to "break up large groups", but actually end up being used by said groups to delete enemy

You mean like the new mythic Spaulders of Ruin?
"Activating crouch activates and deactivates a 12 meter Aura of Pride. Up to 6 allies in the aura gain 260 Weapon and Spell Damage. Reduce your Weapon and Spell Damage by 130 for every group member benefiting from your Aura of Pride"
It's a good chunk of damage for the entire group, since everyone is on top of each other already. And the one wearing it can be a "purge- and/or buff bot" and thus the group doesn't lose any of it's power.

I honestly don't think they are trying to "break ballgroups".

DrSlaughtr

illutian wrote: »

Hymzir wrote: »

Remove cast time from Inevitable Detonation.

That's all you really need to do.
It hits pretty hard as is, but the problem is that it hits so rarely since balls are on permanent speed and just run out of range before you can cast the damn thing. This is also why siege doesn't work against balls.

I'd also nerf the base damage, make it basically useless when it hits 4 or less, and then ramp up the damage multiplier so it hits 50% harder than now, when it hits 8 or more.

Do that and people will spread out. And people will also re-think the idea of running in those pass by AOE dependant balls glued to the butt of the crown.

Honestly, I'd just change it so the one morph is still 'you become a bomb'. But then the other one, instead of 'it blows up on dispell' it becomes 'applies to 2 other nearby targets'.

TheEndBringer wrote: »

Secondly if you put a debuff in Battle Spirit to hurt all groups you'll tick off pretty much everyone and further encourage players to solo, which is already a huge issue as it is.

That's why I mention it doesn't have be to 100% loss. But that ~50% damage reduction is insane when you have 20 players spamming heals...even though those heals are reduced by ~50% as well.

My guess is most ball groups run at least 1 tank set per person since individual DPS isn't an issue.

Side Note: Cyrodiil was just as lively without Battle Spirit 'back in the day'. ...and people still die just as quick (but that's another topic).

AFAIK, this is the only thing that hasn't been tried. They tried buffing Siege Damage awhile ago. They tried new sets. They tried reworking Champion Points. They tried buffing/nerfing abilities. Balls keep rolling over people though.

Any mechanic that will punish any group of any size will only further force players to solo play which is already (imo) a major issue in Cyrodiil.

As for seige, yes they buffed it back in Summerset, iirc. There was a massive backlash because players are babies so it was reversed. Having said that, today that are all too weak. On my stamblade I can eat pretty much anything save a direct lancer shot. It's absurd.

Ball groups survive by avoiding and negative damage. One piece of buffed siege with a multiplier would significantly force them from their safe spaces, which makes them killable.

Most of these groups now run. 30k+ hp on most or all members. They don't need to hit hard individually when they're all dropping the same crap on you. Meanwhile it makes them even harder to root out. The days of just dropping a negate and ulti dumb died a year ago before the proc meta.

Joy_Division

illutian wrote: »

Since Convergence and Hrothgar are totally useless at doing 'the title'.

Why don't you, instead, make it so Battle Spirit's damage reduction is reduced by 10 percentage points per ally that is within 5m of you. Meaning if you have 5 allies around you, you will have 0% damage reduction and take the full damage of abilities from enemies.

((The numbers don't have to be exact. But if ZOS wants to stop ball groups this is the only way. New sets won't work.))



....or, ya know...you could just not do anything and continue to let the ball groups run around and destroy everything. And continue making sets that are suppose to "break up large groups", but actually end up being used by said groups to delete enemy.

----

Note: This post is made after watching about 15+ AD try and take out something like 20 DC in a ball. None of the ball members have died for the past 5min as they've easily deleted swathes of AD. So ya. Balls are still just fine and ZOS has no idea what they're doing when it comes to countering players.

Aside from unrealistic notion that say a grenade would more damage to a person if someone else just happened to be within 5 meters of them, any scheme of abilities following this pattern or adjusting Battle Spirit as you propose will help organized groups more than hurt them. Just look at the history of proximity detonation or VD and ask who has gotten more mileage out of them, you're typical PuG or organized group member?

When it's 12 vs. 30, those changes are just going to make the 30 easier to farm.

renne

GuildedLilly wrote: »

They won't go to IC because words cannot express how much they HATE the gankers there and being forced to feed them every PVP event, sooooo... that leaves Cyrodil.

To be fair they won't go to IC because fighting other human beings is pretty much (literally?) the only way to get AP there. BGs you get AP as a particiption award and in Cyro you jump on a zerg grouped or ungroups, especially if they're just taking keeps, you can get it sorted in no time with little time having to fight other humans.

DucLIX

And another one

Fennwitty

Ball groups are an issue in Cyrodiil.

Ball groups can't use siege engines.

Siege engines don't exist in Battlegrounds or IC.

... ZoS could start with siege engines (crazy, I know).

Sandman929

The answer to any problem is never introducing sets to deal with it. I think it's debatable whether ball-groups represent a problem, but I do think the mechanics of heal-over-time stacking and group purging are too strong. I'd rather ZOS just look at these mechanics rather than try to introduce new sets or new mechanics to try balancing.

With all things...sets, skill changes, CP...ZOS doesn't think about them long enough to discover issues, it seems. They don't ever seem to take a few moments to think "Ok, we like this skill/set/mechanic...but what happens if 10 people do this? What happens if 20 people do this?"

EF321

xxslam48xxb14_ESO wrote: »

Give us a stamina proximity detonation or make it scale off weapon power and I will clean up the ball groups. Mag nbs are too weak to do what needs to be done.

Doesn't it already scale with highest offensive stat?

https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Online:Magicka_Detonation
https://eso-skillbook.com/skill/proximity-detonation

Tommy_The_Gun

illutian wrote: »

Why don't you, instead, make it so Battle Spirit's damage reduction is reduced by 10 percentage points per ally that is within 5m of you. Meaning if you have 5 allies around you, you will have 0% damage reduction and take the full damage of abilities from enemies.

That would actually buff groups. "5 allies in your group" would be much better.

^ And this is pretty much the only way to balance ball groups without nerfing any one else in some way. Just look at pale order ring and what it does:

https://eso-sets.com/set/ring-of-the-pale-order
(1 item) Restore 20% of the damage you deal as Health. This value is decreased by 4% per ally you are grouped with. You cannot be healed by anyone but yourself.

It has a condition that makes it weaker, depending on how large the group is. The answer is right there. Sets, healing, damage, resistance... Battle Spirit could scale it somehow with the size of the group. Random zergs (or solo "zerg - surfers") are not over-performing. Small scale groups are also not an issue. The only issue was and always will be ball groups. Every counter so far... destro ulti, vicious death, and now new DC set were supposed to be a counter for those groups, but in practise, it was always reinforcing them. The only way to make those group less powerful & reinforce counter-play is to make stuff scale with the size of the group. So that small scale group will barley even feel it, but larger groups will become less effective .

DrSlaughtr

The server can't handle the load as is and you want it to have to real time calculate the proxy of every person in the field.

You cannot punish people for grouping because you're mad about ball groups. Solo players and small group ap farmers hurt Cyrodiil. Ever since they dropped group number to 12 you've seen fewer and fewer groups. It's harder and harder to get into groups. No one wants to work together.

So yeah let's force another rule onto players that will just make it even less worth it to group up and work together.

neferpitou73

Tommy_The_Gun wrote: »

illutian wrote: »

Why don't you, instead, make it so Battle Spirit's damage reduction is reduced by 10 percentage points per ally that is within 5m of you. Meaning if you have 5 allies around you, you will have 0% damage reduction and take the full damage of abilities from enemies.

That would actually buff groups. "5 allies in your group" would be much better.

^ And this is pretty much the only way to balance ball groups without nerfing any one else in some way. Just look at pale order ring and what it does:

https://eso-sets.com/set/ring-of-the-pale-order
(1 item) Restore 20% of the damage you deal as Health. This value is decreased by 4% per ally you are grouped with. You cannot be healed by anyone but yourself.

It has a condition that makes it weaker, depending on how large the group is. The answer is right there. Sets, healing, damage, resistance... Battle Spirit could scale it somehow with the size of the group. Random zergs (or solo "zerg - surfers") are not over-performing. Small scale groups are also not an issue. The only issue was and always will be ball groups. Every counter so far... destro ulti, vicious death, and now new DC set were supposed to be a counter for those groups, but in practise, it was always reinforcing them. The only way to make those group less powerful & reinforce counter-play is to make stuff scale with the size of the group. So that small scale group will barley even feel it, but larger groups will become less effective .

We shouldn't be discouraging from grouping in an MMO. Besides, I can already tell you how we'd get around that. Run together in comms but not ingame group. Will it make it harder for us to do what we do? Sure. Impossible, nah.

Sandman929 wrote: »

The answer to any problem is never introducing sets to deal with it. I think it's debatable whether ball-groups represent a problem, but I do think the mechanics of heal-over-time stacking and group purging are too strong. I'd rather ZOS just look at these mechanics rather than try to introduce new sets or new mechanics to try balancing.

With all things...sets, skill changes, CP...ZOS doesn't think about them long enough to discover issues, it seems. They don't ever seem to take a few moments to think "Ok, we like this skill/set/mechanic...but what happens if 10 people do this? What happens if 20 people do this?"

Exactly.

Here's a list of things that would actually hurt ball groups that we'd actually feel (I lead ball groups, so I mean it when I say these things would hurt us).

1.) Nerf crit damage (which ZOS is doing next patch)

2.) Nerf purge. Reduce the number of effects cleansed ramp the cost and get rid of the heal. At the very least this will force us to add another healer. Make efficient purge the single target morph and cleanse the group morph.

3.) Fix all the random CC bugs

4.) Nerf harmony.

5.) Nerf Swift

And that's just off the top of my head. I'm sure I could come up with more if I thought about it more. Are these solutions perfect? No. Will ball groups actually feel them? Yes.

I made another lengthy post on this but the way ZOS is addressing ball groups right now might actually be backwards. Adding more sources of AOE to the game only benefits ball groups because we can stack it. Paradoxically the better solution is to weaken AOE damage which means that ball groups will have to adapt to using single target damage, which gives pugs a bit more of a fair fight since they can mass single target damage easy enough. I can't think how you'd do this without affecting some major playstyles but this would likely fix the issue.

TheEndBringer wrote: »

The server can't handle the load as is and you want it to have to real time calculate the proxy of every person in the field.

You cannot punish people for grouping because you're mad about ball groups. Solo players and small group ap farmers hurt Cyrodiil. Ever since they dropped group number to 12 you've seen fewer and fewer groups. It's harder and harder to get into groups. No one wants to work together.

So yeah let's force another rule onto players that will just make it even less worth it to group up and work together.

The single worst change they made in Cyrodiil during the past year (which is saying a lot) was reducing group size. My guilds used to run pick up groups for pugs to introduce them into PvP and give them people to play with. With 24 people in the group you had a lot of room for bad palyers. Most of the good players in the groups I run now started like this. Now? we don't even have enough room in group for good players; leaving newer players to figure it out for themselves. It's made PvP so much less accessible.