As a Plaguebreak user; please nerf Plaguebreak

mickeyx

This is why i don't like PVP. Because of PVP the PVE players have to suffer. You get skills, weapons and sets nerfed and the PVE players who never even stepped foot in PVP have to pay the price.

Brrrofski

mickeyx wrote: »

This is why i don't like PVP. Because of PVP the PVE players have to suffer. You get skills, weapons and sets nerfed and the PVE players who never even stepped foot in PVP have to pay the price.

Well firstly, it's a set that drops in pvp and was intended for pvp.

Secondly, I'm surprised it even works on NPCs. Vicious Death never did.

Even then, in PvE, it has a niche for grinding. It's not very good in any proper PVE setting outside of overland, which is easy anyway.

And let's not pretend PvE doesn't affect pvp as well. Plenty of nerfs to PvE have had an impact on pvp. Just recently, a slew of sets that were nice to buff before engaging were nerfed because PvE players were buffing with them and using the dressing room add on to swap back to other gear.

As someone who plays both, I can see how they equally impact on each other.

Like it or not, pvp is a thing. When something is too strong in pvp, it impacts the game massively. It's not the pvp community's fault that ZOS doesn't find a way to make a change that works in both settings.

Dorkener

Its Syvarra's with better offensive stats and a mini VD effect, ofc everyone and their dog is running it.

EF321

Dorkener wrote: »

Its Syvarra's with better offensive stats and a mini VD effect, ofc everyone and their dog is running it.

"Mini"

James-Wayne

This set damage isn't strong against one target only multiple as it was designed to do.

Leave it be.

AuraStorm43

I’d just prefer they remove it entirely, its a poorly designed set

Vevvev

James-Wayne wrote: »

This set damage isn't strong against one target only multiple as it was designed to do.

Leave it be.

Unless that one target is a Warden who put their netch up. Can't take it off and now every five seconds till it fades they're exploding.

Janni

My death recap last night consisted of a:
23,382 Vicious Death
4000 Occult Overload
37,373 Plague Infected

That's it. No one purged. It was simply a bomb from range. This set along with that utter nonsense they call Dark Convergence need to be deleted from the game like, yesterday!

Janni

mickeyx wrote: »

This is why i don't like PVP. Because of PVP the PVE players have to suffer. You get skills, weapons and sets nerfed and the PVE players who never even stepped foot in PVP have to pay the price.

This is a totally unfair sentiment. It's not like we go in and change the stats and code because we hate PvE. We just don't want to see the portion of the game we like getting utterly wrecked by this nonsense. Besides, there are far more changes that I've seen due to exploits and imbalances in PvE than in PvP, yet they affect us both.

Kwoung

mickeyx wrote: »

This is why i don't like PVP. Because of PVP the PVE players have to suffer. You get skills, weapons and sets nerfed and the PVE players who never even stepped foot in PVP have to pay the price.

You could avoid the issue by not trying to make PVE content easy mode, with sets put in game specifically for PVP. In short, without PVP those sets wouldn't exist in the first place, so your argument there is a bit flawed.

robpr

Bombing is a non-sense mechanic.
One person should not be able to delete half of the group with one skill combination. Why do you have to take damage over someone's actions you completely have no control over.

Resource draining and healing reduction should be a tool to combat groups. Groups should dispatch other groups, not individuals. You will never be able to balance bombing.

StarOfElyon

TequilaFire wrote: »

So we go back to nerfing ways to control zergs and are right back where we started.
Same thing when the buffed siege and had to nerf it back.
Faction stacking zergs are the problem, ball groups get the blame.

I never asked for a way to control zergs. I don't know anyone who did. No solo player, at least.

AuraStorm43

robpr wrote: »

Bombing is a non-sense mechanic.
One person should not be able to delete half of the group with one skill combination. Why do you have to take damage over someone's actions you completely have no control over.

Resource draining and healing reduction should be a tool to combat groups. Groups should dispatch other groups, not individuals. You will never be able to balance bombing.

“Bombing” keeps zergs in check, why do you think they buffed Vicious Death and gave it the ability to crit?

Janni

AuraStorm43 wrote: »

robpr wrote: »

Bombing is a non-sense mechanic.
One person should not be able to delete half of the group with one skill combination. Why do you have to take damage over someone's actions you completely have no control over.

Resource draining and healing reduction should be a tool to combat groups. Groups should dispatch other groups, not individuals. You will never be able to balance bombing.

“Bombing” keeps zergs in check, why do you think they buffed Vicious Death and gave it the ability to crit?

The easiest way to keep zergs in check would be to remove heal stacking and reduce the number of debuffs that a person can have put on them. This would allowed skilled players that are solor or small-group to pick off individuals from larger groups without worry that they are fighting someone that is basically immortal due to an excessive number of heals on their target or the worry that they'll be swamped with two dozen debuffs from the zerg.

katanagirl1

mickeyx wrote: »

This is why i don't like PVP. Because of PVP the PVE players have to suffer. You get skills, weapons and sets nerfed and the PVE players who never even stepped foot in PVP have to pay the price.

PvE players suffer? Until you step into PvP you will never understand suffering.

Kwoung

Janni wrote: »

AuraStorm43 wrote: »

robpr wrote: »

Bombing is a non-sense mechanic.
One person should not be able to delete half of the group with one skill combination. Why do you have to take damage over someone's actions you completely have no control over.

Resource draining and healing reduction should be a tool to combat groups. Groups should dispatch other groups, not individuals. You will never be able to balance bombing.

“Bombing” keeps zergs in check, why do you think they buffed Vicious Death and gave it the ability to crit?

The easiest way to keep zergs in check would be to remove heal stacking and reduce the number of debuffs that a person can have put on them. This would allowed skilled players that are solor or small-group to pick off individuals from larger groups without worry that they are fighting someone that is basically immortal due to an excessive number of heals on their target or the worry that they'll be swamped with two dozen debuffs from the zerg.

I think you may be confusing zergs with organized groups. Zergs don't heal stack, they are just a bunch of solo players (sometimes grouped) running around as a mob. They are also incredibly easy to kill either by picking them off one by one, or enmasse with a nuke ability. The only issue with approaching a zerg if you are solo is, you will get their attention rather quickly, as unlike organized groups that will generally ignore a solo player (unless he attacks), zergs tend to love a good 60v1. So if you want to kill them, either be in a good organized group, or wait until another zerg engages them and then go to town.

ApoAlaia

katanagirl1 wrote: »

mickeyx wrote: »

This is why i don't like PVP. Because of PVP the PVE players have to suffer. You get skills, weapons and sets nerfed and the PVE players who never even stepped foot in PVP have to pay the price.

PvE players suffer? Until you step into PvP you will never understand suffering.

I only PvP as 'means to an end' (slooooowly unlock dyes, get leads, transmutes, whathaveyou...) and on a good day is 'bah', on a bad one is horrendous.

Whether skills will fire or not is anybody's guess, half the time I am playing in the past, the other half I have no idea what's going on, I honestly don't know how you guys enjoy it.

I guess if it is your jam you are prepared to put up with more frustration? Not sure.

Either way not sure how this set works on PvP, on PvE is OK for trash setups on some stam characters (StamDK and Stamcro I use on) for certain content.

Said that this set was released for PvP, I consider the fact that it works in PvE under certain circumstances 'a happy coincidence'; if it needs to be reworked so it works for its intended purpose and no longer works on PvE so be it?

IronWooshu

ArchMikem wrote: »

If we're talking about PvP, can we still talk about how horrible it is to fight Necro Bombers?

pain.

IronWooshu

mickeyx wrote: »

This is why i don't like PVP. Because of PVP the PVE players have to suffer. You get skills, weapons and sets nerfed and the PVE players who never even stepped foot in PVP have to pay the price.

PvP didn't get Crit nerfed.

biminirwb17_ESO

PB is intended to make people spread out, it has a small radius of 8m. It only does 712 disease damage when it explodes (50% more per target) so it really needs people clumped in a choke point.

Sure it can be combined with other sets but so can anything, just stop with the nerf stuff. How about we make people easier to kill and stop the dumb tank meta we are in or maybe the mistforming tanks with infinite mag who only spam dark convergence on Siegers.

Time to kill should be short if people want to build for it, but they should be very easy to kill - risk v reward, at the moment anything that actually works is instantly complained about.

The only thing that needs changing in the DC pull off walls in my opinion cos that removes an element of the game that is needed to defend a keep.

Woodenplank

I'll admit that it's my own doing for focusing on this set in particular - don't misunderstand me, I'm not saying "nerf this set and PVP balance will be right and dandy" - there are a lot of things wrong, but I think that this set in particular sticks out like a sore thumb.

It was implemented as a way to deal with rampant Purge spamming - And sure it does punish reckless Purge usage, but it also punishes considerate and mild use, such that Wardens and Templars can no longer use core class skills without possibly exploding their whole team.

And it's also simply Vicious Death 2.0 - actually surpassing the damage of that set for any moderate sized group (getting 4 players within 8 meters of eachother is not a difficult feat in Cyrodiil, and anything beyond that; Plaguebreak > VD).
Even if you removed the Purge proc, I would still use it in PVP - Because all you need is one ill-equipped zergling to get the ball rolling, and it will kill anyone around. When I used it in Cyrodiil, I coupled it with Wretched Vitality, and just spammed Brawler - this was enough for me to rack up dozens of kills by myself, despite this set being my only offensive choice, and using a pretty half-assed AoE damage ability.

I think ZOS should address the issue of Purge spamming (honestly, I only see large "Ball Groups" doing this, and they can survive a few Plaguebreak procs any way...), but this set was not the way to do it.

biminirwb17_ESO wrote: »

Sure it can be combined with other sets but so can anything, just stop with the nerf stuff. How about we make people easier to kill...

Time to kill should be short if people want to build for it, but they should be very easy to kill - risk v reward, at the moment anything that actually works is instantly complained about.

The issue with "making people easier to kill" is; how would you go about it?
Nerf defensive sets (again)? - Because at this point, there's only a handful of defensive sets that haven't been nerfed into the ground.
Buff offensive sets? - This will just make it easier to make impossible-to-kill, yet still high kill-potential builds... Like say, a defensive set+Plaguebreak+spamming Brawler like I mentioned above. A setup that braindead should not function, but overtuned offensive sets, like Plaguebreak, work as a crutch and carry builds that are otherwise fully defensive/sustain oriented.

I'm not calling you out in particular; none of us have all the answers here, and the interplay of PVE-PVP balance means that ZOS can't just switch around things on a dime without possibly upsetting half the playerbase.

My two cents would be; nerf baseline durability (like from Battle Spirit) and buff the defensive sets, so that people have to dedicate equipment slots to defensive options, and forego damage.
This isn't perfect either. But I feel that sets like Plaguebreak and Dark Convergence give you the kill-potential of a "glass-cannon", while still allowing ample room to build defensively - making you a... steel cannon, I guess?

biminirwb17_ESO wrote: »

The only thing that needs changing in the DC pull off walls in my opinion cos that removes an element of the game that is needed to defend a keep.

Surely you can't think that's the only thing which needs to change about PVP...

HyekAr

Well, I went to cyrodril to get it for pve.
I dont really play pvp, and I like weird sets with weird abilities, and it was a time i was checking abt desease abilities.

And i had a fun playing pve, it is really cool with exolisive effect. But my damage on skeleton never reached more that 15k

So I dont understand why ppl are nervious, again I think that pvp has to do more with ability of playing then this set

biminirwb17_ESO

We have Oblivion damage but it is limited, maybe if people want to build to be tank busters they should be allowed much higher oblivion damage that scales off the max health/armor of people who chose to build tanky, rock. paper. scissors.

At the moment I am seeing more and more tank only groups especially early in the morning when all factions are 1 or 2 bars just waiting for the other two factions to open a keep then walking in to the flags and holding block.

Every build should have a counter, if you max as a tank you become susceptible to oblivion damage, if you shield then the old shieldbreaker set would shred you, want to cloak specific poisons reveal you, etc etc. If you build to do damage to one type of player you do less damage to other types.

Just saying oh this set is too much end up with little variation and the game becoming stale (a pvp perspective)

ZoS has been trying to get people to spread out for years, the answer is to PB is simple, spread out.

HyekAr

NinjaApacHe wrote: »

Woodenplank wrote: »

First off, I believe this set is just the latest symptom in a long line of misguided attempts to fix game mechanics by releasing new sets - but that's how ZOS likes to do things for now, so I won't get into it.

• (2 items) Adds 1487 Offensive Penetration
• (3 items) Adds 129 Weapon Damage and Spell Damage
• (4 items) Adds 129 Weapon Damage and Spell Damage
• (5 items) Dealing direct damage to an enemy, who is not a Plague Carrier, turns them into a Plague Carrier for 10 seconds, dealing 1715 Disease Damage over the duration. If the plague is removed early, it explodes, infecting enemies within 8 meters of the carrier and dealing 712 Disease Damage. The explosion deals an additional 50% damage per enemy hit. This effect can occur once per attack and scales off the higher of your Weapon or Spell Damage.

It was designed to "punish larger groups for casting Purge with reckless abandon" - And it did that in a way; such that you're either part of a "Ball Group" which has the defenses/healing to power through it any way, or you're a part of disorganized rabble which will get absolutely obliterated if someone decides to use a Cleanse Synergy.
Anyhow, I digress. The set does make it punishing to spam Purges - but it does so much more than that. I use it in Cyrodiil, sure. But I also use it in Battlegrounds, or in PVE (yes, the dot/explosion also applies to PVE monsters) - things don't even have to be Purged, if a target dies they explode just the same (the tooltip fails to mention that, but it's there. Case in point; it works in AOE farming PVE)
At this point it's simply better than most other damage sets for Stamina (potentially).

Compare it to a set like Syvarra's Scales

• (2 items) Adds 1206 Maximum Health
• (3 items) Adds 1096 Maximum Stamina
• (4 items) Adds 1096 Maximum Magicka, Reduces your damage taken from Guards by 20%.
• (5 items) When you deal damage, you cause a burst of lamia poison that deals 900 Poison Damage in a 5 meter radius and an additional 10272 Poison Damage over 6 seconds to all enemies hit. This effect can occur once every 7 seconds and scales off the higher of your Weapon or Spell Damage.

Viper's Sting

• (2 items) Adds 657 Critical Chance
• (3 items) Adds 1096 Maximum Stamina
• (4 items) Adds 657 Critical Chance
• (5 items) When you deal damage with a Martial melee attack, you deal an additional 6400 Poison Damage over 4 seconds. This effect can occur once every 4 seconds and scales off the higher of your Weapon or Spell Damage.

or Sheer Venom, which can only be applied with Execute abilities.

• (2 items) Adds 1096 Max Stamina
• (3 items) Adds 129 Weapon and Spell Damage
• (4 items) Adds 129 Weapon and Spell Damage
• (5 items) When you deal damage with an Execute ability you infect the enemy, dealing 6576 Poison Damage over 6 seconds and dealing up to 100% more damage to enemies under 100% Health. This effect can occur every 6 seconds per target.

These sets do 1712, 1600, or 1096-2192 (at best!) DPS with their procs. Plague only does 1177 - lower, but somehow still comparable no?
Disregarding for the moment how Plaguebreak has an almost ideal offensive stat line of Penetration, Weapon Damage, Weapon Damage, you might prefer one of above sets in a 1v1 scenario - assuming your opponent doesn't use any sort of Purges - but in virtually any other scenario, Plaguebreak far outshines these sets (and most other proc sets at the moment)

Say you're a Warden - who, like most Wardens, likes to use Betty Netch summon, which purges a negative effect once every 5 seconds. If you're fighting, say, a stamDK with Plaguebreak, you'll probably be hit with Noxious Breath (Dot+Major Breach), Venomous Claw (DoT) and the Plaguebreak. Leaving you with a nice 25% chance to nuke yourself (and anyone around) if the Netch happens to purge the wrong effect.
Or say you're a Templar, and you like to use Cleansing Ritual (either morph) because it's a nice aura for dueling in (healing/damage) - better hope no one has Plaguebreak on you, because that's gonna hurt - incidentally, any rando who uses your Synergy might also nuke you.

Now, you might be thinking; well, Vicious Death can also be used to nuke groups like that. But I would argue that Plaguebreak is simply stronger than VD in every way.

Now, for a reference Weapon Damage of 5500 (not at all optimal, but just a reference point), Vicious Death does 18500 death-explosion damage.
Plaguebreak "only" does 4000, but it scales with 50% per target. Meaning that Plaguebreak would out-damage VD once there are 4+ enemies hit. Considering that Plaguebreak also has greater radius (8m vs. the 5m of VD) this is a fairly easy condition to meet, even in Battlegrounds.
Furthermore, while VD's (5)-piece bonus is USELESS in 1v1 scenarios, Plaguebreak remains very competitive with other DoT-proc sets. And in all this, we're not even taking into account that Plaguebreak reacts to purges.

I'm not sure exactly how this set should be nerfed; but I definitely think it should be - and I'll find something else to use, but right now it's simply too good to pass up.

I think ZOS should instead look towards "fixing" these game mechanics by... actually changing the game mechanics, rather than this patchwork of item sets.
Make a Purge cost-buffer like what's existed for roll-dodges and Streak/Ball-Lightning for years, so you can't spam it senselessly? Reduce the efficiency of things like purge, such that players at least have to build towards purging, if they want to keep it up?
I don't have all the answers, of course, but I'm fairly certain Plaguebreak isn't it.


ZOS's own descriptions of the set, for refererence:

"Similar to Dark Convergence, we targeted large groups again with this set, focusing on their ability to have numerous purges running, making locking them down and bleeding them out incredibly difficult to do. Now, larger groups must purge more carefully, running the risk of setting off ticking time bombs and having to heal up the aftermath instead of repeatedly casting it with reckless abandon"
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/584299/pc-mac-patch-notes-v7-1-5-waking-flame-update-31

Currently, this set feels like it is a better version of most Damage over Time sets, such as Hunter's Venom or Viper's Sting, where it can output decent pressure but with the added bonus of an explosion if removed early. We've toned down both the Damage over Time and the damage of the explosion against low target counts, while increasing the damage against large target counts to ensure it continues smashing groups who are chain casting purges with reckless abandon. Overall, this should help reduce the need to purge the set and make it far less oppressive to fight against as a solo or low group count player.
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/590109/pc-mac-patch-notes-v7-2-5-deadlands-update-32

EDIT:
For those commenting on it being a "Stamina set" - If you use it on weapons/Jewelry there is absolutely nothing about it that makes it maladapted for magicka builds - in fact, I've seen plenty of magicka builds using this.
It's Offensive Penetration, Weapon/Spell Damage, Weapon/Spell Damage and a proc which scales of the higher of your weapon/spell damage - perfectly fine for any build, as long as you don't use it on body pieces.

[snip]

🤣😂
[edited to remove quote]

Woodenplank

NinjaApacHe wrote: »

[snip]

Can we please be mature about this?

Litterally never been in a ball group - I'm rather a noob at PVP - never made it higher than Captain rank on any character.
As I said; I also use it in Battlegrounds, because that's how strong it is - I could upload footage of me abusing the set in small-scale PVP (no ball-groups involved), if you want that.
- although I'm not certain how to upload videos on the forums, someone would have to give me a pointer or two.


Even a noob like me can score kills with Plaguebreak by just spamming Brawler in Cyrodiil or the like. Or the chain-reaction allows me to kill a whole team in Battlegrounds by just streaking in (as StamSorc) and spamming Whirling Blades for a moment.
I don't think that was ever the set's intended effect, and that's why I'm calling for it to be nerfed.
I haven't even "gold"-ed the set yet, because I'm still hoping it gets nerfed.


And for what it's worth... I've never seen a ball group go down to this set.

[edited to remove quote]

biminirwb17_ESO

A noob can score kills by just using streak or brawler or any other skill PB is no different. Please stop saying it can do things it cannot by itself.

For instance if I hit you with lethal arrow from my VD nirnhoned bow and you die of the poison dots and proc VD and occult overload on your buddies was it my PB armor or could I have done the same with another set?

Woodenplank

biminirwb17_ESO wrote: »

For instance if I hit you with lethal arrow from my VD nirnhoned bow and you die of the poison dots and proc VD and occult overload on your buddies was it my PB armor or could I have done the same with another set?

Another set could have done the damage to proc VD and Occult Overload, sure. But no other set would have contributed another (potentially stronger than VD) death explosion in 8m radius.

AJones43865

All the PvP sets that were released at the same time as Dark Convergence are buggy and radically out of balance. These sets do not balance with older sets at all. They are all buggy and perform unpredictably in high lag situations. (which is always in cyrodiil)

It makes it seems like they fired the devs that knew what they were doing to a degree and assigned the task of designing new sets to people who have never done something like that before.

If 50% of everyone in PvP is running a set, it's because it's too overpowered. Plus, they are all mindless proc sets, which means they are using server resources to keep track of all those procs for all those people.

All these not so new PvP sets have issues and should be removed IMO.

wazzz56

a few things.....if you are dying from purging pb the issue lies probably more in your build/stacking....... and the fact that you are most likely STACKED on a ram or flag is why you are taking big pb numbers on your recap when somebody dies....there are far bigger problems in pvp than sets that kill ppl....

Woodenplank

By the way, I'm not saying "tHiS sEt rUiNs tHe GaEm, nErf it or i uNInstAlL" - I'm saying I think it's overperforming, and reaching beyond its intended purpose.

I'm all for buffing other damage sets, because in these last few patches I feel like PVP builds have condensed to a frighteningly low number of really viable sets.
Since nerfing things has a great tendency to *** people off, I generally advocate buffing other options. But Plaguebreak is, I think, a bad enough offender that it should be changed.

There are a lot of things ZOS could do to tweak PVP, but they seem mostly content to slap a new item set on it, and call it a day. Want to punish reckless Purge-spam? Let's make a set that punishes ANY kind of purging. And also make it punish stacking up in groups; just because.

I just think there are better options out there, if the Developers would be willing to try it out.
How about a cost-ramp for spamming Purge? That mechanic already exists for Bolt Escape and Roll Dodging, why not purges? This wouldn't screw over the Wardens and Templars who just want to use Netch/Ritual once per fight.
Or make Plaguebreak an irremovable Oblivion damage DoT or Heal Reduction that starts weak, but simply ramps up in damage from repeated Purge attempts.
I don't know, but I feel like Vicious Death, but with purge-procs wasn't the right call in any case.




P.s.
People also complain a lot of Dark Convergence, and I do see it frighteningly often (yet another set that was "designed to target larget groups" but crops up in Battlegrounds anyhow...). But I'm personally not too bothered, so I won't comment on it.