Add no HoT stacking to battle spirit to counter ball groups

freedom2love

As we all know there are 2 Heal over time buffs you can share with other players which stack multiple times: Radiating Regeneration and Echoing Vigor. The problem with these is that they are not static heals which could be countered with a bomb in that area. Neither would heal negation work because quite simply there isn't enough to counteract the insane stacking these 2 abilities are used by ball groups. The fact is that because these 2 abilities allow mobility while their effect up then nothing stops ball groups running Snowtreaders (which makes you immune to snares) and escapist's poisons/immovability potions (which can offer around half uptime on crowd control immunity).

All of these things combined together allow ball groups to run sets like vicious death, plaguebreak or dark convergence plus a defensive set to cap their resists along with stacking health as high as possible. So the biggest issue is that the sets that were introduced to counter ball groups themselves are being utilised by them to farm PuGs (aka new players). The problem with this is you never targeted the root cause and instead buffed things like occult overload which is even worse because it quite simply blows people up with very little counterplay because its unresistable damage and area based if anybody dies including NPCs. Please add no HoT stacking to battle spirit to counter ball groups because not only does this fix this problem but it allows PvE to enjoy the mechanic for healers.

Amottica

Has Zenimax used battle spirit to change how any skill behaved other than the standard reducing of damage/healing?

If they have not, then this is a long-shot request.

When running with my guild, I have noticed that we do small to moderate size groups that are usually between 4-8 people. The fight ends with deaths. The more evenly yoked the groups fighting are, the longer the fight goes, but that is logical. The more imbalanced the groups are, the shorter the fight, no matter how many are casting heals on the losing side.

I am just providing my observation.

Cuddlypuff

HOTS isn't an issue except for maybe Earthgore, which is truly a ridiculous set when stacked on multiple players. Snow Treaders is the main crutch that will destroy most ball groups if removed from the game.

Source: My duo has wiped every ball group on PC-NA GH 2v12+ with no other players or mobs nearby.

IZZEFlameLash

Cuddlypuff wrote: »

HOTS isn't an issue except for maybe Earthgore, which is truly a ridiculous set when stacked on multiple players. Snow Treaders is the main crutch that will destroy most ball groups if removed from the game.

Source: My duo has wiped every ball group on PC-NA GH 2v12+ with no other players or mobs nearby.

I want to see this if you got a footage.

Hotdog_23

Amottica wrote: »

Has Zenimax used battle spirit to change how any skill behaved other than the standard reducing of damage/healing?

If they have not, then this is a long-shot request.

When running with my guild, I have noticed that we do small to moderate size groups that are usually between 4-8 people. The fight ends with deaths. The more evenly yoked the groups fighting are, the longer the fight goes, but that is logical. The more imbalanced the groups are, the shorter the fight, no matter how many are casting heals on the losing side.

I am just providing my observation.

Don’t know about Battle spirit change and not speaking to the original request of the thread but Blood Mist behaves differently in PVE vs. PVP encounters.

Blood Mist
Target: Area
Skill description
Dissolve into a bloody mist, reducing your damage taken from players by 75% for as long as you maintain the channel. While in this form you deal 398 Magic Damage every 1 second to enemies around you and heal for the damage caused. Entering this form removes and grants immunity to all disabling and immobilization effects, but you cannot be healed by any other ability and your Recovery stats are disabled.
New effect
Deals damage to enemies around you and heals for the damage caused.

https://eso-skillbook.com/skill/blood-mist

Stay safe

xxslam48xxb14_ESO

Really wish zos could comment on this thread and give us a reason why they haven't done this yet.

freedom2love

Cuddlypuff wrote: »

HOTS isn't an issue except for maybe Earthgore, which is truly a ridiculous set when stacked on multiple players. Snow Treaders is the main crutch that will destroy most ball groups if removed from the game.

Source: My duo has wiped every ball group on PC-NA GH 2v12+ with no other players or mobs nearby.

So you truly believe that snowtreaders which can be replaced by something like shuffle are the only reason ball groups are unkillable? Do you realise mathematically the amount of stacked HoTs they have? Maybe you and Frosty can duo bomb them of that I have no doubt. But for random PuGs which ZOS is apparently trying to encourage to pvp do you really think it's fine for them to be farmed inside keeps at their spawn?

The ball groups have taken scrolls before and trolled alliances including their own. In my opinion the nerfing of stacked HoTs via battle spirit will severely impact ball groups and trying to dispute this fact is futile. PvP is purely a numbers game and balance can only be achieved objectively. Thank you for your response though and please continue the discussion with me.

MISTFORMBZZZ

nerf hot stacking and ball groups will be adding a healer and focus on burst heal + eventually increasing resistances and hp. And again the zergs and random groups get a bigger nerf then the ball groups.

Amottica

Hotdog_23 wrote: »

Amottica wrote: »

Has Zenimax used battle spirit to change how any skill behaved other than the standard reducing of damage/healing?

If they have not, then this is a long-shot request.

When running with my guild, I have noticed that we do small to moderate size groups that are usually between 4-8 people. The fight ends with deaths. The more evenly yoked the groups fighting are, the longer the fight goes, but that is logical. The more imbalanced the groups are, the shorter the fight, no matter how many are casting heals on the losing side.

I am just providing my observation.

Don’t know about Battle spirit change and not speaking to the original request of the thread but Blood Mist behaves differently in PVE vs. PVP encounters.

Blood Mist
Target: Area
Skill description
Dissolve into a bloody mist, reducing your damage taken from players by 75% for as long as you maintain the channel. While in this form you deal 398 Magic Damage every 1 second to enemies around you and heal for the damage caused. Entering this form removes and grants immunity to all disabling and immobilization effects, but you cannot be healed by any other ability and your Recovery stats are disabled.
New effect
Deals damage to enemies around you and heals for the damage caused.

https://eso-skillbook.com/skill/blood-mist

Stay safe

The skill still behaves the same in PvP as it does in PvP. The only difference is in PvE we do not take damage from players, but the skill still does the same thing.

Amottica

MISTFORMBZZZ wrote: »

nerf hot stacking and ball groups will be adding a healer and focus on burst heal + eventually increasing resistances and hp. And again the zergs and random groups get a bigger nerf then the ball groups.

I agree. Suggestions like this sound great on paper but the organized group is in a much better position to overcome such changes than the average group and especially the solo player. It will just give the so-called "ball groups" a bigger advantage.

Thraben

There is an easy way to find out whether such a change would benefit ballgroups or not:

Count the ticking HoTs on solo players and players in PuG groups.

On average, a Pug group would hardly have more than 2 Hots active at any given time, whereas a ballgroup has at least 6 ticking HoTs on them at any given time. And I'm REALLY generous with that one. So even a bad ballgroup would suffer 3x as much from the change than a normal player.

So the argument "In the end, ballgroups would benefit from game changes intended to weaken them", whilst true in many other cases, does not apply here.

The change WOULD however cause a split in the ballgroup community: The real good one would prevail, and the rest would become PuG fodder.

---

That being said, I'm all for replacing the current Hot system with Minor and Major Regeneration, since in a computer game, reactive healing should be more impactful than healing over time in order to make the healer's position more skillful and rewarding. And as a bonus, it opens more counterplay options in PvP.

MISTFORMBZZZ

Thraben wrote: »

There is an easy way to find out whether such a change would benefit ballgroups or not:

Count the ticking HoTs on solo players and players in PuG groups.

On average, a Pug group would hardly have more than 2 Hots active at any given time, whereas a ballgroup has at least 6 ticking HoTs on them at any given time. And I'm REALLY generous with that one. So even a bad ballgroup would suffer 3x as much from the change than a normal player.

So the argument "In the end, ballgroups would benefit from game changes intended to weaken them", whilst true in many other cases, does not apply here.

The change WOULD however cause a split in the ballgroup community: The real good one would prevail, and the rest would become PuG fodder.

---

That being said, I'm all for replacing the current Hot system with Minor and Major Regeneration, since in a computer game, reactive healing should be more impactful than healing over time in order to make the healer's position more skillful and rewarding. And as a bonus, it opens more counterplay options in PvP.

Nerf hots and every dd & support slots a class heal or as told before : adding a extra healer , focusing on burst heal, adding hp or resistance 🤷‍♂️🤷‍♂️🤷‍♂️
And yes at the end ballgroups would benefit from it again 😅

Wolfpaw

freedom2love wrote: »

As we all know there are 2 Heal over time buffs you can share with other players which stack multiple times: Radiating Regeneration and Echoing Vigor. The problem with these is that they are not static heals which could be countered with a bomb in that area. Neither would heal negation work because quite simply there isn't enough to counteract the insane stacking these 2 abilities are used by ball groups. The fact is that because these 2 abilities allow mobility while their effect up then nothing stops ball groups running Snowtreaders (which makes you immune to snares) and escapist's poisons/immovability potions (which can offer around half uptime on crowd control immunity).

All of these things combined together allow ball groups to run sets like vicious death, plaguebreak or dark convergence plus a defensive set to cap their resists along with stacking health as high as possible. So the biggest issue is that the sets that were introduced to counter ball groups themselves are being utilised by them to farm PuGs (aka new players). The problem with this is you never targeted the root cause and instead buffed things like occult overload which is even worse because it quite simply blows people up with very little counterplay because its unresistable damage and area based if anybody dies including NPCs. Please add no HoT stacking to battle spirit to counter ball groups because not only does this fix this problem but it allows PvE to enjoy the mechanic for healers.

if no hot stacking for groups, no hot stacking for "solo" zerg players...I can tell you who comes out on top, it ain't the zerg players.

occult overload was for zergs not ball groups necessarily, zos made 12 player ball groups

SillyGT

Agreed maybe 2 max, this makes pvp really unenjoyable with players having over 25k heals a second. Root cause of the issue is HOT stacking and harmony. Practically lighting fast juggernauts that have one shot potential.

freedom2love

It seems as though ZOS may have listened to our concerns: https://eso-sets.com/set/maras-balm
I guess if they won't nerf ball groups the next best thing they can do is make everyone into a ball group. Welcome to the new tanky meta. Where if you build right you can become invincible for the low price of pay2win.

freedom2love

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/comment/7695753/#Comment_7695753
Mara's Balm is how it feels to fight a ball group as a PUG. I hope in your rush to nerf this set ZOS that you at least consider what it feels like to be on the receiving end of a ball group's stacked hots. God I honestly thought they added this set to bring us all up to their level but as usual just more cash out p2w.

doesurmindglow

IZZEFlameLash wrote: »

[I want to see this if you got a footage.

He doesn't. It's a just a thing he says whenever "ball groups" come up. Most of the time they're bombing pugs, tbh. It's exceptionally rare even a good bomber is able to pull anything like that off on a properly comped ball group, and they gotta be pretty lucky, and more often than not have the help of a zerg when doing it.

But it does contribute the hilariously contradictory narrative of these kinds of posts: "Ball groups are way too powerful and need to be nerfed, but also, I was able to wipe them easily."

If the latter is true, the former is not.

doesurmindglow

Thraben wrote: »

So the argument "In the end, ballgroups would benefit from game changes intended to weaken them", whilst true in many other cases, does not apply here.

What you're failing to consider is that HOT stacking is not the only or even the best source of damage mitigation. It is certainly very powerful, but there are others that can and would become meta if HOT stacking was no longer really an option.

A similar reasoning was once applied to purging which has pretty much been forgotten about entirely. It was once contended, long, long ago (apparently), that simply nerfing purge or removing it as an option for "ball groups" to crutch on would eliminate them. A change was made to the game with this in mind.

It only made them stronger, in the end, because they were able to easily adapt and once they did, everyone else was now a walking bomb that was easily weaponized to huge effect.

This is an entirely predictable (and predicted!) outcome that will be repeated with HOT stacking or any other supposed "magic bullet" game design change that will allegedly once and for all make disorganized zerg capable of defeating more optimized and coordinated groups.

freedom2love

How about this suggestion then? Make Negate available to every class as a weapon or world skill. Also as another thread mentioned the Dark Brotherhood is missing an ultimate. Compensate Sorcerer with a stronger version of the skill or change it entirely. This would eliminate the need to have to use 1 specific class to counter ball groups. While allowing every person who wants to contribute to shutdown with their ultimate to do so.

Perhaps make the weapon or world skill version Negate do no damage but just the silence. This would be balanced enough to be a perfect counter to them but not be able to be abused by only them. Effectively creating huge shutdown zones across the battlefield which could be safely dodge rolled or blocked out of. While giving enough time for the siege from a distance or bombers to finish them off.

MISTFORMBZZZ

freedom2love wrote: »

How about this suggestion then? Make Negate available to every class as a weapon or world skill. Also as another thread mentioned the Dark Brotherhood is missing an ultimate. Compensate Sorcerer with a stronger version of the skill or change it entirely. This would eliminate the need to have to use 1 specific class to counter ball groups. While allowing every person who wants to contribute to shutdown with their ultimate to do so.

Perhaps make the weapon or world skill version Negate do no damage but just the silence. This would be balanced enough to be a perfect counter to them but not be able to be abused by only them. Effectively creating huge shutdown zones across the battlefield which could be safely dodge rolled or blocked out of. While giving enough time for the siege from a distance or bombers to finish them off.

YES make every class able to drop negate so ball groups have 12 negates in group and kill everyone even more easy

freedom2love

I'll make that trade because it goes both ways. Now it's up to ZOS to finally make something like this happen. And we both know how likely that is...

CompM4s

No matter how people complain, or what they change, organized groups will always beat mindless zergs.

DrNukenstein

ball groups are the trial groups of pvp. If it's not the hots then it's the buff uptime, called shots, assignment of roles in the group, or gear and knowledge diff compared to less experienced players. Communication and experience advantages.

Just like pvpers are playing a different game than pveers, ballers are playing a different game than general pvpers. For example, some of them use the term "rotation" in a pvp context. The level of group coordination they play with gives them the space to use rotations in an environment as dynamic as PVP.

The answer is to just accept that one person is going to be very unlikely to dent a ball group and also get out. Only ball groups really have the numbers, organization and optimization to fight other ball groups. Once you accept this, know the signs. Members in a ball group don't stand still and they cast their buffs outside of combat. They also won't have a squishy in the back of the group, because they all know the tail gets the bite.

soniku4ikblis

Honestly, the moment you get 2 pugs to 1 ball group member and then-some, the ball groups get wiped out.

It's a numbers game for sure.

A couple of pugs won't wipe out a ball group and a ball group eventually falls when its 15 bgs to 30+ pugs.

The fights last forever on floor 3 of keeps, sure. But eventually faction stacking a ball group will run it off.

Meanwhile, that 15 man ball-group farms pugs while running a scroll across the map and making AP bank. Good for them. Until all the pugs get mobilized and annihilate the bg due to sheer numbers. lol

DrSlaughtr

I wouldn't care about HoT stacking if a 40k health tank couldn't power heal 11 players to near immortality. Healers used to be forced to be healers, which made them vulnerable and forced the group to protect them. Now the tank healer can just ignore vasts amounts of incoming damage. The days of sending in a NB assassin to kill the healer prior to a negate bomb are long gone.

Dem_kitkats1

Wolfpaw wrote: »

if no hot stacking for groups, no hot stacking for "solo" zerg players...I can tell you who comes out on top, it ain't the zerg players.

occult overload was for zergs not ball groups necessarily, zos made 12 player ball groups

Maybe a couple of patches ago when zerg players were more likely to have multiple HoTs stacked on them, but that switched when Oakensoul was introduced and many players ditched the restos. Since then "solos" have been running builds focused on damage or mitigation, instead of relying on HoTs, and they are still surviving.

DrNukenstein wrote: »

Just like pvpers are playing a different game than pveers, ballers are playing a different game than general pvpers.

This is true. Which is why limiting HoT stacking in groups will not have the same impact on zergs as it will on ballgroups. With the emergence of PB, VD, and Occult combos, zergs/solos do not have the option of moving in a similar way to that of ballgroups. It's hard to obtain several HoT ticks when you can't stack near one another and there is no guarantee of healers to reapply them. Yes, limit HoT stacking and ballgroups will adjust and continue to remain strong, but that's one less thing in their myriad of immunities.

MEBengalsFan2001

Cuddlypuff wrote: »

HOTS isn't an issue except for maybe Earthgore, which is truly a ridiculous set when stacked on multiple players. Snow Treaders is the main crutch that will destroy most ball groups if removed from the game.

Source: My duo has wiped every ball group on PC-NA GH 2v12+ with no other players or mobs nearby.

Removing all mythical sets from pvp would improve pvp. Removing all dungeons, trials, and arena sets from pvp would improve pvp. IMO the only sets that should work in pvp are overland sets and sets from pvp zones.

freedom2love

Should pressing 2 buttons (radiating regeneration/echoing vigor) while relying on ZOS P2W like mythics/latest flavor of the month op set really be rewarded this much?

freedom2love

MidniteOwl1913

DrNukenstein wrote: »

ball groups are the trial groups of pvp. If it's not the hots then it's the buff uptime, called shots, assignment of roles in the group, or gear and knowledge diff compared to less experienced players. Communication and experience advantages.

Just like pvpers are playing a different game than pveers, ballers are playing a different game than general pvpers. For example, some of them use the term "rotation" in a pvp context. The level of group coordination they play with gives them the space to use rotations in an environment as dynamic as PVP.

The answer is to just accept that one person is going to be very unlikely to dent a ball group and also get out. Only ball groups really have the numbers, organization and optimization to fight other ball groups. Once you accept this, know the signs. Members in a ball group don't stand still and they cast their buffs outside of combat. They also won't have a squishy in the back of the group, because they all know the tail gets the bite.

Yes, unless ZOS can figure out a way to nerf skill (this is a sarcastic remark BTW ;-) ) there is no real way to end ball groups. They are organized, practiced, and focused. Those are their buffs that really matter and no amount of nerfing healing will counter that.

boi_anachronism_

I think limiting HoT stacking to 2 stacks would be fine tbh