Idea for tackling ball groups

Urzigurumash

xxslam48xxb14_ESO wrote: »

I had a brain blast for a set that I think might actually work amazingly on ball groups. A proc set that has an irresistible single target pull with very high range. Same rules as any other pull, so no ripping people off of walls or towers.

Chains of the schemer Prince

*insert 2-4pc bonus here*

5pc: Using a single target ability on an enemy pulls them to you with an irresistible and unbreakable chain. While chained you and the enemy cannot move more then 5m apart and cannot be healed or deal damage for 5 seconds. Only works on players!

Ball groups rely on their heal spam and mobility to overcome all opposition, so they would only be hurting themselves by using the set. A single focused aim could pull 1 balling 40m out of his group and make him easy prey for the horde of chasers. Repeat this a couple times and their entire group would be dismantled with ease. Only way I could see them coping is by all going permablock tank to survive the 5 seconds without heals, but then they are just annoying and not dangerous. OP? Only if you have team mates around or else its just 5 seconds of being chained to someone you can't harm. Rewards teamwork and heavily punishes players for relying on heals and mobility for survival. Not totally un survivable either if you got enough stamina to roll or block for 5 seconds. Even using shield spells is a counter as long as you aren't completely nuked by his team. Cloaking will make you invisible, but still chained. Also has the added benefit of being amazing for removing annoying tower humpers from your resources.

I think @xxslam48xxb14_ESO is right, this would definitely work. Might have its own problems yes, but there's no way a ballgroup could use this with their current methods.

I agree with @Einstein_ though, what's necessarily wrong with coordinated 12 person groups being unbeatable except by other coordinated 12 person groups? My one and only real complaint is that they can flag a keep from the inside for the purpose of farming players. That's outside the bounds of how the game is supposed to be played - but coordinating and optimizing a full group is exactly what we're supposed to do.

xDeusEJRx

michaelpatterson wrote: »

I would adjust the snow treaders since theyre likly the biggest imbalance.. make them not permanant immovable but proc on and off maybe every 10-12secs can proc on for 6 when encountering a CC.. this will still give them all good surprise immovable uptime but in a situation where 100 people are hammering them with ults stuns etc and unable to stop or even damage them it will greatly stagger the "groups" uptimes n break it up a bit making killing them more possible.

Snow treaders is a fair trade off imo. You only become immune to soft cc's and snares. Most ball group players already have a purge available so they could purge away soft CC's like immobilizes. Treaders just saves you the trouble of doing that. You can still get hit with hard CC's like any unblockable/undodgeable stuns. It just saves you from root spam and at the cost of being able to sprint.
I've run snow treaders when playing solo and it only saves you from cleansable effects, so any hard CC's like fossilize, chains, streak, off balance stun, surprise attack stun, etc all can still stun you. It just saves trouble of having to spam cleanse effects or break free

McTaterskins

LarsS wrote: »

divnyi wrote: »

LarsS wrote: »

The primary reason a ball group is strong, is not skills or any type or sets. Ball groups are strong because they are on voice chat, they work together and everyone know what to do and how to support the rest of the group.

Right, and that support is "everyone click HoT" + role-specific things. Without HoT in group vs group fight players will die as fast as they die in shooting games. Balls will be no different.

Surely ball groups will still win zergs of equal size. It's the question of "what's the multiplier". Currently it's very high. I bet that without hot stacking double zerg size will consistently wipe balls without any issues.

First zergs use HoT to, without it they will be down even faster. A ball group focus burst damage where people stack, then moves of regenerating, drawing the zerg to another choke point then again drops a focused damage burst and so on. You can expect that all ball members have self heal so no. without HoT the zerg would supper more than a ball.

Disagree.

The zerg surfers aren't making sure everyone's hopping around spamming radiating etc. - Without 3-6 stacks or more of radiating regen, the ball group wouldn't make it much past the first "focus burst" as they would then need to be using resources and coordination to stay alive as they're getting zerged down.

Yes, an organized group should* beat an unorganized group. However, the "organized" groups right now are potentially being carried by stacking an easy cast blanket heal over time.

deleted221205-002626

Einstein_ wrote: »

michaelpatterson wrote: »

I would adjust the snow treaders since theyre likly the biggest imbalance.. make them not permanant immovable but proc on and off maybe every 10-12secs can proc on for 6 when encountering a CC.. this will still give them all good surprise immovable uptime but in a situation where 100 people are hammering them with ults stuns etc and unable to stop or even damage them it will greatly stagger the "groups" uptimes n break it up a bit making killing them more possible.

that will change nothing, groups can just build 5 medium and can all use shuffel (which they are already doing btw).....

why do ppl think they can nerf optimized gameplay between good players ?

well I think theres a difference between optimised and invulnerable. It should not be both

deleted221205-002626

gamma71 wrote: »

Organized group vs mindless zerg doesn't matter what you do your gonna get smoked Everytime. And most of what zos does to counter ball groups backfires anyways look at Dc lol. Good smart players that group together are always gonna be better than the mindless zerglings and wanna be solo heroes.

agreed but certain items make the orgainised play mindlessly if everything is just auto wheres the skill in that? We used to have to very carefully time our abilities now its just immobile all the time!

deleted221205-002626

Now if i can just get my hands on the gloves that cast the rest of my abilities for me and maybe the hat thay auto follows the group leader.. i can like go watch a movie n take the map =p

deleted221205-002626

xDeusEJRx wrote: »

michaelpatterson wrote: »

I would adjust the snow treaders since theyre likly the biggest imbalance.. make them not permanant immovable but proc on and off maybe every 10-12secs can proc on for 6 when encountering a CC.. this will still give them all good surprise immovable uptime but in a situation where 100 people are hammering them with ults stuns etc and unable to stop or even damage them it will greatly stagger the "groups" uptimes n break it up a bit making killing them more possible.

Snow treaders is a fair trade off imo. You only become immune to soft cc's and snares. Most ball group players already have a purge available so they could purge away soft CC's like immobilizes. Treaders just saves you the trouble of doing that. You can still get hit with hard CC's like any unblockable/undodgeable stuns. It just saves you from root spam and at the cost of being able to sprint.
I've run snow treaders when playing solo and it only saves you from cleansable effects, so any hard CC's like fossilize, chains, streak, off balance stun, surprise attack stun, etc all can still stun you. It just saves trouble of having to spam cleanse effects or break free

oh kk. im still catching up on all the new stuff but that sounds maybe a little more reasonable. Its just unlimited stacking heals and perma immobile is just crazy when 60 people cant even scratch 12 or even get close enough to try half the time.

if someone gonna have the balls to jump in and try there should be some kind of result imo =p

neferpitou73

McTaterskins wrote: »

LarsS wrote: »

divnyi wrote: »

LarsS wrote: »

The primary reason a ball group is strong, is not skills or any type or sets. Ball groups are strong because they are on voice chat, they work together and everyone know what to do and how to support the rest of the group.

Right, and that support is "everyone click HoT" + role-specific things. Without HoT in group vs group fight players will die as fast as they die in shooting games. Balls will be no different.

Surely ball groups will still win zergs of equal size. It's the question of "what's the multiplier". Currently it's very high. I bet that without hot stacking double zerg size will consistently wipe balls without any issues.

First zergs use HoT to, without it they will be down even faster. A ball group focus burst damage where people stack, then moves of regenerating, drawing the zerg to another choke point then again drops a focused damage burst and so on. You can expect that all ball members have self heal so no. without HoT the zerg would supper more than a ball.

Disagree.

The zerg surfers aren't making sure everyone's hopping around spamming radiating etc. - Without 3-6 stacks or more of radiating regen, the ball group wouldn't make it much past the first "focus burst" as they would then need to be using resources and coordination to stay alive as they're getting zerged down.

Yes, an organized group should* beat an unorganized group. However, the "organized" groups right now are potentially being carried by stacking an easy cast blanket heal over time.

The healers in ball groups are more than capable of keeping the group alive even without everyone else spamming regen. Heck they could probably do it without spamming regen themselves. Would it be harder? Sure. Impossible? Heck no! The idea that it's regen spam alone keeping ball groups alive is pure fiction akin to the "Ball groups will finally be able to die without proc sets!" fiasco

To my knowledge most of the damage builds running regen in ball group comps are using it to to take advantage of the sustain granted by the maelstrom resto staff (especially since a lot of these groups are crit based). The added healing is a bonus (non-negligible sure, but when I was designing proc comps we never truly considered the healing aspects of it, mostly the sustain).

The point I believe LARS was trying to make was that if you get rid of these hots the ball group will lose some healing sure but they can just rearrange their comp so that they're still capable of surviving. Whereas the zerg just lost a very potent source of healing and can't coordinate to make up for it.

Einstein_

The basic function of a optimized group is that, you can focus for example 8/12 roles on support stuff to keep the group alive. That will be always doable, you dont need regen you can use other heals or heal sets.....

Then you use 4 DDs full dmg and some synergies + Deto, which is coordinated always enugh to kill everything...

here you go, you have the basics of group play, deticate ppl to do special stuff and you get a GROUP, and this is a GROUP game.

why do ppl really think that running in a group is bad or can be nerfed ?

why should a stack of 25 average randoms be able to kill a group of better and optimized players ?

and if its so ez, why is there only one aktiv group on PC/EU surviving more then 25 players ?

divnyi

neferpitou73 wrote: »

The point I believe LARS was trying to make was that if you get rid of these hots the ball group will lose some healing sure but they can just rearrange their comp so that they're still capable of surviving. Whereas the zerg just lost a very potent source of healing and can't coordinate to make up for it.

If they allow only 2 of the same HoT to be active on a player, that can fix the issue without ruining it for the zergs and trials.

McTaterskins

neferpitou73 wrote: »

The healers in ball groups are more than capable of keeping the group alive even without everyone else spamming regen. Heck they could probably do it without spamming regen themselves. Would it be harder? Sure. Impossible? Heck no! The idea that it's regen spam alone keeping ball groups alive is pure fiction akin to the "Ball groups will finally be able to die without proc sets!" fiasco

To my knowledge most of the damage builds running regen in ball group comps are using it to to take advantage of the sustain granted by the maelstrom resto staff (especially since a lot of these groups are crit based). The added healing is a bonus (non-negligible sure, but when I was designing proc comps we never truly considered the healing aspects of it, mostly the sustain).

The point I believe LARS was trying to make was that if you get rid of these hots the ball group will lose some healing sure but they can just rearrange their comp so that they're still capable of surviving. Whereas the zerg just lost a very potent source of healing and can't coordinate to make up for it.

I don't disagree with a good portion of this at all. In fact, the gameplay described here is what I think should be encouraged.

However, I disagree in that, not all "organized groups" are able to do just that. In many cases not even a matter of whether or not they have the capability or skill. Its the will. The ability to do things such as stack something as simple as radiating regen, even in cases where as you described are pretty much unnoticed, breads complacency.

Example: I mostly small group pvp. I'm not too sweaty about it. Have kids and dogs etc. so I typically end up in a party with the GF (who's playing in another room) and a couple of friends that still play here and there.

Depending on who's on or who's playing what, if we have just 2 of us with radiating regen running, that's 5k+ per second worth of healing on the group without coordinating sets or anything. Per second. In pvp. After battle spirit. It can actually be more depending on what's being worn or coordinated, if at all.

Now multiply that by 2 or 3, or even 4. Even if just using the staves for the sustain aspect because the healing would seem mundane.

The same statement you made, which I agree with, about being able to keep a group alive by being able to use other abilities etc. also means it would not be a nerf in PvE as it would bring some actual importance and real play to being a healer in PvE as well. Not just in some* VHM's.

neferpitou73

divnyi wrote: »

neferpitou73 wrote: »

The point I believe LARS was trying to make was that if you get rid of these hots the ball group will lose some healing sure but they can just rearrange their comp so that they're still capable of surviving. Whereas the zerg just lost a very potent source of healing and can't coordinate to make up for it.

If they allow only 2 of the same HoT to be active on a player, that can fix the issue without ruining it for the zergs and trials.

I'm good with just allowing 2-3 stacks, but eliminating it entirely just makes it harder on everyone.

xylena_lazarow

1) Limit HoT stacking without disrupting PvE trials

2) Disable Snow Treaders in PvP

Einstein_

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

1) Limit HoT stacking without disrupting PvE trials

2) Disable Snow Treaders in PvP

and again ? why deaktivate snow traders ?, especially ballgroups can use 5 medium and have ez time keeping up shuffel while getting major evasion on top.

and why limit hots ?, or better said why do you want to nerf group playing ? ITS A GROUP GAME..
not a solo zergsurfing game....

the only ppl complaining here are zergsurfers (ballgroups dont chease solo players in a tower 20v2), ZOS should encurage ppl to play in organized groups and not mindless zergsurfing.

xylena_lazarow

Einstein_ wrote: »

ZOS should encurage ppl to play in organized groups and not mindless zergsurfing

The power ceiling for ballgroups is higher than ever, but there are fewer ballgroups and ballgroup players than ever. Maybe we need a better large scale meta than hours of lag-inducing 60v12 stalemates on the roof.

Amottica

LarsS wrote: »

Amottica wrote: »

Case in point, those proc sets also help the new player can usually do better with proc sets as they are still learning to play the game.

I practice it's not the case, a decent ball of 12 with proc set builds supporting each other, increses the gap between the ball and the new player. only an organized group can make full use of the proc sets. Dark conversion is a good example, it was designed to kill balls, but it strenghend them.

I did not suggest the proc sets help the new player against ball groups. It seems context was lost with the edit.

Any organized group will be able to make better use of any set or skill that benefits the group. An organized group will always be greater than the sum of their parts whereas an unorganized group or solo players will never be greater than the sum of their build and skill.

MISTFORMBZZZ

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

1) Limit HoT stacking without disrupting PvE trials

2) Disable Snow Treaders in PvP

snow treaders are literally only useful in pvp pretty much. Why should they get removed ?
So the bombard and caltrop spammer who literally press only one button on their bar and even forget to buff up themself, have a better chance to beat ball groups ?

MISTFORMBZZZ

Im a ball group leader and i can only lough about this thread.

I remember proc sets got disabled - people said ,, HA next patch youre gone without proc sets ´´ and we were the first group on our server which adapted 2 days after patch release and proved even without vd and heal sets we win 12 vs 30+.

Dark convergence and plague and hrothgar was announced to be released , people were like ,, HA even ZoS dont likes ball groups, you will be REMOVED next patch by the bAlL gRoUp kILlEr sEtS ´´ and what happened ?

2 Days later we had our stuff together and used the ball group killer sets against them, what ever they did to us we used it against them 2x harder.

Because we communicate, we try stuff out and min max to improve with every run.

Good ball groups will always adapt, evem if the group limit gets reduced to 4 people , you will habe 3 groups in one voice chat, cross healing got enabled again for zerglings, so easy going.

Disable hots, then the dd and support slot a burst heal or a selfish heal instead . It doesnt matter.

Organized groups will always beat unorganized groups if they are semi decent and dont get overhelmed by loads.

And tbh this is exactly how it should be. People cry over ball groups but dont see the effort in min maxing and optimizing the game play in plenty of hours.

divnyi

Another ballgroup player voice, another time we hear this "we will adapt" mantra, but de-facto asking to leave the game as it is - as in, not make changes that will make ball group weaker.

MISTFORMBZZZ wrote: »

Disable hots, then the dd and support slot a burst heal or a selfish heal instead . It doesnt matter.

It does matter, as burst heal costs much more, and is not up when group is stunned, which makes all members vulnerable to dots + burst combos.

xylena_lazarow

MISTFORMBZZZ wrote: »

Good ball groups will always adapt

So your group will learn to adapt to no longer being immune to pretty much everything supposedly designed to counter the ball meta, and come up with a new strategy for a new group meta. I don't see a problem with this, why do you?

neferpitou73

divnyi wrote: »

Another ballgroup player voice, another time we hear this "we will adapt" mantra, but de-facto asking to leave the game as it is - as in, not make changes that will make ball group weaker.

MISTFORMBZZZ wrote: »

Disable hots, then the dd and support slot a burst heal or a selfish heal instead . It doesnt matter.

It does matter, as burst heal costs much more, and is not up when group is stunned, which makes all members vulnerable to dots + burst combos.

We'll just add builds to spam burst heals in the same way we spam regen and cleanse now. Heck cleanse, the other super expensive skill people like to whine about is a burst heal and we use that as a spammable on our healers. Switching from regen to BoR is only marginally more expensive and an AOE burst heal.

The reason you hear the "we will adapt" mantra so much is that any change you make to the game will likely weaken the zerg more than us because we can coordinate to overcome it.

LarsS

neferpitou73 wrote: »

The reason you hear the "we will adapt" mantra so much is that any change you make to the game will likely weaken the zerg more than us because we can coordinate to overcome it.

This is the reason why its so hard to reduce the ball power, ZOS try with the new pvp sets, were not exactly sucessfull. I guess one could device a radically different combat system, like no aoe but that will hardly happen.

What one have to look at is features in the combat system that give balls an advantage. I have already pointed to two possibilities, CP and proc sets. At least hard core balls have players with high cp and a ball can utilize the procsets much better than anyone else. The effect of making Raven non-cp non-proc was on PC/EU, that a number of balls mainly ep guilds left for Gray Host since they understood that their power would decrease.

neferpitou73

LarsS wrote: »

neferpitou73 wrote: »

The reason you hear the "we will adapt" mantra so much is that any change you make to the game will likely weaken the zerg more than us because we can coordinate to overcome it.

This is the reason why its so hard to reduce the ball power, ZOS try with the new pvp sets, were not exactly sucessfull. I guess one could device a radically different combat system, like no aoe but that will hardly happen.

What one have to look at is features in the combat system that give balls an advantage. I have already pointed to two possibilities, CP and proc sets. At least hard core balls have players with high cp and a ball can utilize the procsets much better than anyone else. The effect of making Raven non-cp non-proc was on PC/EU, that a number of balls mainly ep guilds left for Gray Host since they understood that their power would decrease.

Even if they did turn off AOEs we'd just switch to single target. Actually that's what we did in PCNA Raven when the zerg started spreading out, "Ok we can't hit them with AOEs anymore so let's just make insane burst builds" The AOEs are saved for chokes when they have to bunch up.

I'm not sure if the ball groups left for Proc because it's more advantageous for them, or if it's just more fun to play in, in general. I'll agree that Proc sets give ball groups an edge with regards to stats but a good ball group can roll over everyone in No-CP just as easily. Like they did when LP and CB played during the no-proc test in PCNA.

The real trick with ball groups is not playing into their tactics. If you're fighting something that's designed to slaughter everyone in a 10m radius, stay the heck out of it's way.

Amottica

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

MISTFORMBZZZ wrote: »

Good ball groups will always adapt

So your group will learn to adapt to no longer being immune to pretty much everything supposedly designed to counter the ball meta, and come up with a new strategy for a new group meta. I don't see a problem with this, why do you?

I think they are pretty much saying that no matter what the design is, an organized group can take on much larger groups of unorganized players. That is the case with any design.

LarsS

neferpitou73 wrote: »

I'm not sure if the ball groups left for Proc because it's more advantageous for them, or if it's just more fun to play in, in general. I'll agree that Proc sets give ball groups an edge with regards to stats but a good ball group can roll over everyone in No-CP just as easily. Like they did when LP and CB played during the no-proc test in PCNA.

The real trick with ball groups is not playing into their tactics. If you're fighting something that's designed to slaughter everyone in a 10m radius, stay the heck out of it's way.

I agree that a ball will always have an advantage, it should have. The present status on especially cp, is now such that one can build a ball that nearly impossible to kill for the zerg, thats not healty for the game. The gap have increased betwen the normal player and the best balls to a point where people leave pvp. At least on PC/EU I have seen optimized balls, that reach the point that no-one fight them, that is not healty. This did not happen when the game was new, since the gap was not as large. Compared to early ESO there is 2 major changes the CP system and the proc set proliferation. Yes balls are still strong on non-proc but the gap is smaller.

xylena_lazarow

Amottica wrote: »

I think they are pretty much saying that no matter what the design is, an organized group can take on much larger groups of unorganized players.

Taking on larger numbers is not a problem, endless lag-inducing roof stalemates are the problem. It would be better if the ballgroup won so decisively as to make "farming" randoms impossible, they just die and concede.

Groups can stack enough healing to trivially outheal most siege, while Snow Treaders ensure they never ever get stuck in any threatening AoEs and can flat ignore most things randoms throw at them, like Bombard, Time Stop, Caltrops, etc.

This large scale meta is extremely stagnant, devoid of counterplay on both sides of such engagements. Give coordinated groups more stuff to coordinate, like siege operators behind their bombers, or splitting the group to hit multiple targets at once. Give us a better large scale meta than stacking as much healing and AoE burst as possible.

MEBengalsFan2001

Here's a thought....

Group sizes of 1-4 no negative effects applied to the group.
Group size of 5+ - each player receives 500 less armor value per a player

A group of 12 players would all lose 6K from their base armor value, that a free major breach without using major breach.

Stamicka

Hate to break it to you, but ZOS can change anything they want and it won’t solve the underlying problem. Either you need to improve or your group needs to improve in terms of coordination.

I think there are way too many sets in the game and I think that heal stacking is broken. Ballgroups definitely use this to their advantage. But you’re playing the same game and you could use this to your advantage as well. Ballgroups can kill other ballgroups, I’ve seen it many times.

I definitely think that ZOS needs to change how heal stacking works and remove tons of sets from the game. However, don’t forget that the opposition will always have the same tools available to them. So if they can’t heal stack, neither can you so they might even kill you more easily than they already do.

xylena_lazarow

Stamicka wrote: »

So if they can’t heal stack, neither can you so they might even kill you more easily than they already do.

Deal.

neferpitou73

MEBengalsFan2001 wrote: »

Here's a thought....

Group sizes of 1-4 no negative effects applied to the group.
Group size of 5+ - each player receives 500 less armor value per a player

A group of 12 players would all lose 6K from their base armor value, that a free major breach without using major breach.

Yes let's discourage people from grouping in an online multiplayer game