horrid ball groups ruining pvp

Jaraal

Tonturri wrote: »

a no-go due to damage mitigation and heals ticking in between skills.

Well, you've answered your own question, essentially.

You need to reduce the damage mitigation of shields, reduce the effectiveness of healing, and lower the mobility of the group of players. Now, there are sets and skills that address all of these factors, and they work very well. The problem is that, as a solo bomber, you can no longer stack enough damage to take out the weakened group. You would need at least two players to be effective: one defiler and one damager. And you would need to be extremely coordinated and have a plan to deliver the blow in a good choke point, etc.

The reason ball groups run basically unchecked is because hardy anyone runs defile (reduction of healing, shielding, resistance, and mobility) gear any more. Everybody wants to focus on damage or self preservation.... so there's no room for anti-buffing gear and skills. If you watch two ball groups fight each other, it's usually a stalemate, as they will try to outheal and outshield each other, and they will get bored and move on to find some hapless victims.

If somebody wanted to build a ball killer group, they could easily do that. And it would be quite effective. The problem is finding enough people who want to be role players instead of stars in Cyrodiil.

Tonturri

Jaraal wrote: »

Tonturri wrote: »

a no-go due to damage mitigation and heals ticking in between skills.

Well, you've answered your own question, essentially.

You need to reduce the damage mitigation of shields, reduce the effectiveness of healing, and lower the mobility of the group of players. Now, there are sets and skills that address all of these factors, and they work very well. The problem is that, as a solo bomber, you can no longer stack enough damage to take out the weakened group. You would need at least two players to be effective: one defiler and one damager. And you would need to be extremely coordinated and have a plan to deliver the blow in a good choke point, etc.

The reason ball groups run basically unchecked is because hardy anyone runs defile (reduction of healing, shielding, resistance, and mobility) gear any more. Everybody wants to focus on damage or self preservation.... so there's no room for anti-buffing gear and skills. If you watch two ball groups fight each other, it's usually a stalemate, as they will try to outheal and outshield each other, and they will get bored and move on to find some hapless victims.

If somebody wanted to build a ball killer group, they could easily do that. And it would be quite effective. The problem is finding enough people who want to be role players instead of stars in Cyrodiil.

A small bomb group sounds like fun tbh. May be time for me to go make some new friends. Thanks for your input!

VaranisArano

Tonturri wrote: »

VaranisArano wrote: »

OP, if you or your faction mates continue to throw yourselves at the enemy and they kill you over and over again, that doesn't constitute harassment or breaking the TOS by the enemy.

It means you're allowing yourselves to be farmed. You can try something different or walk away.

Also ZOS has never said that players are under any obligation to return Scrolls to their home keeps. I personally don't enjoy scroll farming, but it's consistently allowed and has been a staple of the campaigns for years.


I don't mean this to be snide, but since I see you've decided to try PVP relatively recently and are complaining about stuff like LOS and nightblade gankers, I thought it might be worth saying this in general:

Just because you don't enjoy fighting against a playstyle doesn't mean it shouldn't be allowed.

I applaud your choice to start trying PvP, so I say this gently: some of this is a skill issue. The more experienced you get, the more you will learn to deal with LOS, with gankers, and yes with ball groups too. However, if you continue to run with random players or zerg or even in a small group, you will always be at a disadvantage compared to a ball group.

Ball Groups are the PVP equivalent of PVE score pushing trial groups. And with your PVE experience, I want you to think about how impossible it's been for ZOS to nerf those top PVE trials groups. Everything ZOS nerfs, they adapt to. Everything ZOS buffs, those trials groups use better than everyone else. It's not a question of why are PVE trials groups allowed to push the limits; its simply that 12 coordinated players in voice comms has a synergistic effect that ZOS finds near impossible to balance and who far outstrip the best efforts of the average Craglorn PUG.

That's what's going on with Cyrodiil Ball Groups.

They only seem immortal. Trust me - I've been a ball group healer - we're not immortal. The tactics like negates, and bombs, and pulling us apart one by one work, even though they are quite hard to pull off because, you know, we also know what works against us.

They seem immortal because they've used all the classes, skills, and sets that ZOS gives players in a practiced, coordinated group of 12 players to synergistic effect.

They also seem immortal because you're new and you're going up against them either solo or with the equivalent of an average Craglorn PUG at your back.

Genuine advice from a ball group healer: if you want to fight us properly, either join a ball group on your own faction or start honing your small scale skills or your bomber skills. Ball group players like me build to be a part of the group. CC or pull us out of the group and we're shockingly vulnerable to 1v1 combat. I mean, what am I gonna do, heal you to death? Nah, I'm gonna try to run back to my group, which is where you use your skills at small scale combat to kill me, and now my group is down a healer. Or I escape, because actually I'm reasonably good at staying alive while I escape back to my group, you know? It depends on how good you are, and yeah, that skill takes time and practice to acquire.

So that's my suggestion: by all means, practice the anti-ball tactics like negates and picking out individual players! I actually love it. Keeps things interesting on our end. Just expect that there'll be a lot of learning from failure along the way, just like it would take a ton of practice, effort, and failures if you wanted to progress in PVE trial scorepushing.

Returnee player here, perhaps slightly off topic but I wanted to ask an odd question - do you know of any resources on bombing organized groups? Kind of a 'hey, can you give me the knife I'm gonna stab you with' but I figured why not. I'm hoping to get into bombing, but I've only found vids and builds that seem geared towards bombing less organized groups (people sitting there attacking a keep door, no HoTs running, no buffs, etc). There are setups like rushing death + vicious death, but the Rushing proc has a 2 sec delay before it does the pull and AoE. I've also seen vicious death + mechanical acuity (admittedly on Console vids), with the difference being the first seems to have more overall damage but more vulnerability, while the other just crams a few abilities into a single instance but makes sure they crit. I'm curious about the differences in bombing organized groups vs disorganized blobs - I imagine the armor buffs present and HoTs rolling would mean that anything that takes more than a second to pull off (so no rushing death proc via gap closre, then waiting two seconds for everything to go off) is a no-go due to damage mitigation and heals ticking in between skills.

So, I don't have any resources myself aside from my experiences getting bombed. Sorry!

So much of successful bombing is in the timing. You're right that its hard to bomb a ball group when they're expecting it, so if you're going solo, it very much becomes a matter of picking your moment when their guard is down or when your alliance mates are making a push.

When their guard is down - most of our deaths to bombs came while we were repairing walls, standing on a resource flag with random players around us, or standing around figuring out our next move.

When your alliance is making their move - most of our wipes to bombs happened while rushing to the flags while under siege or running up stairs while under heavy fire from chasing players. Here the bomb is kind of the cherry on top. We're taking damage and we're probably just a little strung out. Then, boom! (Harmony bombs, especially necros, used to be extremely effective here, which is why I don't understand why ZOS nerfed it. But oh well.)

It won't be easy as a solo bomber though. Just like how a single Negate with no followup doesn't do anything to a ball group, a single bomb with no other incoming damage won't do much either, and you'll be dead griping at your faction for letting them get away.

Bad times to bomb: while we're sieging the front door. We look like a tempting target, but we totally expected bombers and everyone who wasn't on siege was ready to react. It almost never worked.

.......

If you're willing and able to coordinate with others, then you have more options. And if you can communicate in voice comms, so much the better because you can coordinate your attacks.

While this thread is from 2021 and so I'm sure the builds are outdated by now, you might find the general tactical advice for a "Ball Breaker" group useful: https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/557515/ball-breaker-groups-heh/p1

As a matter of general advice from 2021, Crown has a good PVP guide, coming from experience leading a ball group: https://darkelves.com/how-to-win-vs-ball-groups/

.........

Good luck and more power to you!

geonsocal

i love all the regulars (there's a bunch of you - thinking now of you though @VaranisArano ) that'll take a somewhat dramatic thread title (hey, gotta catch folks eyeballs ) and then provide really sound solutions...

time and again...

Tonturri

VaranisArano wrote: »

Tonturri wrote: »

VaranisArano wrote: »

OP, if you or your faction mates continue to throw yourselves at the enemy and they kill you over and over again, that doesn't constitute harassment or breaking the TOS by the enemy.

It means you're allowing yourselves to be farmed. You can try something different or walk away.

Also ZOS has never said that players are under any obligation to return Scrolls to their home keeps. I personally don't enjoy scroll farming, but it's consistently allowed and has been a staple of the campaigns for years.


I don't mean this to be snide, but since I see you've decided to try PVP relatively recently and are complaining about stuff like LOS and nightblade gankers, I thought it might be worth saying this in general:

Just because you don't enjoy fighting against a playstyle doesn't mean it shouldn't be allowed.

I applaud your choice to start trying PvP, so I say this gently: some of this is a skill issue. The more experienced you get, the more you will learn to deal with LOS, with gankers, and yes with ball groups too. However, if you continue to run with random players or zerg or even in a small group, you will always be at a disadvantage compared to a ball group.

Ball Groups are the PVP equivalent of PVE score pushing trial groups. And with your PVE experience, I want you to think about how impossible it's been for ZOS to nerf those top PVE trials groups. Everything ZOS nerfs, they adapt to. Everything ZOS buffs, those trials groups use better than everyone else. It's not a question of why are PVE trials groups allowed to push the limits; its simply that 12 coordinated players in voice comms has a synergistic effect that ZOS finds near impossible to balance and who far outstrip the best efforts of the average Craglorn PUG.

That's what's going on with Cyrodiil Ball Groups.

They only seem immortal. Trust me - I've been a ball group healer - we're not immortal. The tactics like negates, and bombs, and pulling us apart one by one work, even though they are quite hard to pull off because, you know, we also know what works against us.

They seem immortal because they've used all the classes, skills, and sets that ZOS gives players in a practiced, coordinated group of 12 players to synergistic effect.

They also seem immortal because you're new and you're going up against them either solo or with the equivalent of an average Craglorn PUG at your back.

Genuine advice from a ball group healer: if you want to fight us properly, either join a ball group on your own faction or start honing your small scale skills or your bomber skills. Ball group players like me build to be a part of the group. CC or pull us out of the group and we're shockingly vulnerable to 1v1 combat. I mean, what am I gonna do, heal you to death? Nah, I'm gonna try to run back to my group, which is where you use your skills at small scale combat to kill me, and now my group is down a healer. Or I escape, because actually I'm reasonably good at staying alive while I escape back to my group, you know? It depends on how good you are, and yeah, that skill takes time and practice to acquire.

So that's my suggestion: by all means, practice the anti-ball tactics like negates and picking out individual players! I actually love it. Keeps things interesting on our end. Just expect that there'll be a lot of learning from failure along the way, just like it would take a ton of practice, effort, and failures if you wanted to progress in PVE trial scorepushing.

Returnee player here, perhaps slightly off topic but I wanted to ask an odd question - do you know of any resources on bombing organized groups? Kind of a 'hey, can you give me the knife I'm gonna stab you with' but I figured why not. I'm hoping to get into bombing, but I've only found vids and builds that seem geared towards bombing less organized groups (people sitting there attacking a keep door, no HoTs running, no buffs, etc). There are setups like rushing death + vicious death, but the Rushing proc has a 2 sec delay before it does the pull and AoE. I've also seen vicious death + mechanical acuity (admittedly on Console vids), with the difference being the first seems to have more overall damage but more vulnerability, while the other just crams a few abilities into a single instance but makes sure they crit. I'm curious about the differences in bombing organized groups vs disorganized blobs - I imagine the armor buffs present and HoTs rolling would mean that anything that takes more than a second to pull off (so no rushing death proc via gap closre, then waiting two seconds for everything to go off) is a no-go due to damage mitigation and heals ticking in between skills.

So, I don't have any resources myself aside from my experiences getting bombed. Sorry!

So much of successful bombing is in the timing. You're right that its hard to bomb a ball group when they're expecting it, so if you're going solo, it very much becomes a matter of picking your moment when their guard is down or when your alliance mates are making a push.

When their guard is down - most of our deaths to bombs came while we were repairing walls, standing on a resource flag with random players around us, or standing around figuring out our next move.

When your alliance is making their move - most of our wipes to bombs happened while rushing to the flags while under siege or running up stairs while under heavy fire from chasing players. Here the bomb is kind of the cherry on top. We're taking damage and we're probably just a little strung out. Then, boom! (Harmony bombs, especially necros, used to be extremely effective here, which is why I don't understand why ZOS nerfed it. But oh well.)

It won't be easy as a solo bomber though. Just like how a single Negate with no followup doesn't do anything to a ball group, a single bomb with no other incoming damage won't do much either, and you'll be dead griping at your faction for letting them get away.

Bad times to bomb: while we're sieging the front door. We look like a tempting target, but we totally expected bombers and everyone who wasn't on siege was ready to react. It almost never worked.

.......

If you're willing and able to coordinate with others, then you have more options. And if you can communicate in voice comms, so much the better because you can coordinate your attacks.

While this thread is from 2021 and so I'm sure the builds are outdated by now, you might find the general tactical advice for a "Ball Breaker" group useful: https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/557515/ball-breaker-groups-heh/p1

As a matter of general advice from 2021, Crown has a good PVP guide, coming from experience leading a ball group: https://darkelves.com/how-to-win-vs-ball-groups/

.........

Good luck and more power to you!

This was immensely helpful, thank you very much!

Auldwulfe

The biggest weakness of any "ball group" is that they ARE a ball group.
They are in ONE place --- so fine, leave them.
When I see a huge zerg or ball group, and I KNOW we don't have enough defenders.... leave
You are not going to hold the castle, so don't give them extra points..... Focus your defense where you absolutely need it --- scrolls, etc. Anything else, you can reclaim, and get points for doing it.

Second, support, and encourage "roamers".... better single players, or 2 person teams.... they hit resources etc. You do NOT have to take a resource, just threaten it... make it flash on the map. Rig up 2 Ballista, and fire a couple times at a gate, and then leave .... keep making them travel all around, while you communicate and coordinate to cut transit lines, and slow them down, further.....

A ball group can't do much when 4 forts, and 6 resources suddenly flash as under attack... mind you, though... coordination might be difficult, as I have SEEN red players clear all the guards on a resource I had been fighting for... as a blue, at that moment, and then back off, and let a yellow grab it, while they left, having killed everything, but never trying to take it.

I am not saying that only red and yellow do it, I just witnessed it that time ..... and I have seen responses that could only happen if a person was sitting in my faction chat, while using discord to report to a guild, or whatever.

Get to KNOW some of the players in the faction you are in... chat with them, and coordinate .... hit multiple locations... some as diversions, some for real. Make the ball and zerg groups have to keep running all over, defending, and dealing with limited transits.....

I do play all 3 factions, depending on mood, and which character I want to use, although I am loyal to the faction I am currently playing... and I do try and build groups that communicate, while operating in pairs.... a 12 man group, divided up into 6 teams, hitting resources, causing mayhem, and more importantly, flooding an opponent with constant attacks that may, or may not, be serious can do FAR more than just running all over.
Then again, I was tactical military intelligence, years ago.... so maybe I just think differently.

Auldwulfe

godchucknzilla

Why the isn't echoing vigor spamming and stacks getting addressed?

LittlePinkDot

Aerenthir wrote: »

I don't really see what the problem is with ball groups now that the lag is gone ( at least for me it is, even with several ball groups at one place my ping doesn't go over 120 ).

Ballgroups don't bother me and don't kill me. I don't chase them and if I move to the side even standing next to them they don't even engage. Their damage lies in an organised ultimate stacking burst, which they will never waste on a solo random person.

Farming with a scroll has been a thing for years and it's of course not against the rules, because the campaign score doesn't really matter in the sense that players don't win the campaigns, but night capping wins it. The faction that caps everything during the night/early day is usually the one that wins.

"Negate, negate, negate" doesn't work, because it needs to be followed by an actual damaging burst. I don't understand the zerg mentality which assumes that they should be able to kill them. Why? Why do you think that a group of non organized people that throw random skill every now without any voice syncronization or timing, should be able to kill a group of 40k hp running, that are in a call?

I'm playing as an EP and I see those ball groups every evening and I'm still having a blast of fun. However I don't chase the ball groups and I don't care what they are doing. If they go to one keep I go to another. I go take a resource by myself and fight whoever comes there.

Snake in the Stars is really bad though. I've watched how ball groups outheal it easily. Not cleanse mind you, just outheal a set that is supposed to counter healing.

P.S Best way to deal with them is not Negate actually but to break their sieges before they get inside a keep. Seen few people of EP doing it and the ball groups left eventually from the keep they were trying to enter.

Play BGs, they're better anyway.
It's a quick match and straight to the point.

I cyrodiil is just a horse simulator unless you're grouped with people.

Otherwise you spend 15 minutes riding a horse looking for some action somewhere.

There needs to be more transitus stations than there are now.
Cyrodiil is boring as a solo player.

ProudMary wrote: »

FakeZavos wrote: »

ProudMary wrote: »

ZOS needs to nerf or limit cross healing significantly.

This is the solution that has been pointed out for years now, yet ZOS has yet to listen and give it a try to see if it works or not. Radiating regen is the the primary offender. Just nerf it or make it so it only effects one other player and ball groups will immediately be much easier to deal with.

Cross healing has been nerfed more times then u can count my dude. Healing springs is way worse then it used to be (used to be able to spam it). Radiating regeneration isnt wven close to what it was (heal used to be waaaay higher). Vigor has been nerfed multiple times (both versions used to be aoe, now only the yellow one) and so on.

Ball groups always adapt, u can try to nerf them one way and they will be more broken another way.

They haven't nerfed radiating regen, which is what people have been calling for and what I outlined in my post.

I don't give a **** about ballgroups. My SOLO sorc that has no burst heal like every other class NEEDS radiating regen.
Not everything in the game revolves around PvP and ball groups.

LittlePinkDot

ArchMikem wrote: »

Those Healers Varanis mentioned really are priority targets. If you have any CC abilities, focus down the Healers, do what you can to drain their Stamina. When your friendlies see you've stunned or immobilized the Healer it's like blood in the water.

Hey I just had an idea... How about a mag NB Healer that can cloak away and still has Merciless resolve?

CameraBeardThePirate

Tonturri wrote: »

VaranisArano wrote: »

OP, if you or your faction mates continue to throw yourselves at the enemy and they kill you over and over again, that doesn't constitute harassment or breaking the TOS by the enemy.

It means you're allowing yourselves to be farmed. You can try something different or walk away.

Also ZOS has never said that players are under any obligation to return Scrolls to their home keeps. I personally don't enjoy scroll farming, but it's consistently allowed and has been a staple of the campaigns for years.


I don't mean this to be snide, but since I see you've decided to try PVP relatively recently and are complaining about stuff like LOS and nightblade gankers, I thought it might be worth saying this in general:

Just because you don't enjoy fighting against a playstyle doesn't mean it shouldn't be allowed.

I applaud your choice to start trying PvP, so I say this gently: some of this is a skill issue. The more experienced you get, the more you will learn to deal with LOS, with gankers, and yes with ball groups too. However, if you continue to run with random players or zerg or even in a small group, you will always be at a disadvantage compared to a ball group.

Ball Groups are the PVP equivalent of PVE score pushing trial groups. And with your PVE experience, I want you to think about how impossible it's been for ZOS to nerf those top PVE trials groups. Everything ZOS nerfs, they adapt to. Everything ZOS buffs, those trials groups use better than everyone else. It's not a question of why are PVE trials groups allowed to push the limits; its simply that 12 coordinated players in voice comms has a synergistic effect that ZOS finds near impossible to balance and who far outstrip the best efforts of the average Craglorn PUG.

That's what's going on with Cyrodiil Ball Groups.

They only seem immortal. Trust me - I've been a ball group healer - we're not immortal. The tactics like negates, and bombs, and pulling us apart one by one work, even though they are quite hard to pull off because, you know, we also know what works against us.

They seem immortal because they've used all the classes, skills, and sets that ZOS gives players in a practiced, coordinated group of 12 players to synergistic effect.

They also seem immortal because you're new and you're going up against them either solo or with the equivalent of an average Craglorn PUG at your back.

Genuine advice from a ball group healer: if you want to fight us properly, either join a ball group on your own faction or start honing your small scale skills or your bomber skills. Ball group players like me build to be a part of the group. CC or pull us out of the group and we're shockingly vulnerable to 1v1 combat. I mean, what am I gonna do, heal you to death? Nah, I'm gonna try to run back to my group, which is where you use your skills at small scale combat to kill me, and now my group is down a healer. Or I escape, because actually I'm reasonably good at staying alive while I escape back to my group, you know? It depends on how good you are, and yeah, that skill takes time and practice to acquire.

So that's my suggestion: by all means, practice the anti-ball tactics like negates and picking out individual players! I actually love it. Keeps things interesting on our end. Just expect that there'll be a lot of learning from failure along the way, just like it would take a ton of practice, effort, and failures if you wanted to progress in PVE trial scorepushing.

Returnee player here, perhaps slightly off topic but I wanted to ask an odd question - do you know of any resources on bombing organized groups? Kind of a 'hey, can you give me the knife I'm gonna stab you with' but I figured why not. I'm hoping to get into bombing, but I've only found vids and builds that seem geared towards bombing less organized groups (people sitting there attacking a keep door, no HoTs running, no buffs, etc). There are setups like rushing death + vicious death, but the Rushing proc has a 2 sec delay before it does the pull and AoE. I've also seen vicious death + mechanical acuity (admittedly on Console vids), with the difference being the first seems to have more overall damage but more vulnerability, while the other just crams a few abilities into a single instance but makes sure they crit. I'm curious about the differences in bombing organized groups vs disorganized blobs - I imagine the armor buffs present and HoTs rolling would mean that anything that takes more than a second to pull off (so no rushing death proc via gap closre, then waiting two seconds for everything to go off) is a no-go due to damage mitigation and heals ticking in between skills.

The truth is, you really aren't going to bomb a more coordinated group without a coordinated group of your own.

Coordinated groups will have far too much off-healing and ults like Barrier or Gibbering Shelter that will completely shut down a solo bomber. If you want to cut through all of that, you almost need a Negate and at the absolute least, a handful of damage dealers.

If you have the ability to make a group like that, it really just takes practice lining up your burst. Comms help for lining up spike damage (things like sub assaulting at the same time for example). Generally, Rush is going to do better in bombing coordinated groups than DC will (as most good players will block DC a good chunk of the time). Rush also pulls immediately rather than on a delay, and the burst damage is much more consistent.

The take home message is being able to line up multiple players' spike damage with a pull and a Negate. I won't say it's the only way to bomb more coordinated groups, but good luck doing it without those things.

VaranisArano

Auldwulfe wrote: »

The biggest weakness of any "ball group" is that they ARE a ball group.
They are in ONE place --- so fine, leave them.
When I see a huge zerg or ball group, and I KNOW we don't have enough defenders.... leave
You are not going to hold the castle, so don't give them extra points..... Focus your defense where you absolutely need it --- scrolls, etc. Anything else, you can reclaim, and get points for doing it.

Second, support, and encourage "roamers".... better single players, or 2 person teams.... they hit resources etc. You do NOT have to take a resource, just threaten it... make it flash on the map. Rig up 2 Ballista, and fire a couple times at a gate, and then leave .... keep making them travel all around, while you communicate and coordinate to cut transit lines, and slow them down, further.....

A ball group can't do much when 4 forts, and 6 resources suddenly flash as under attack... mind you, though... coordination might be difficult, as I have SEEN red players clear all the guards on a resource I had been fighting for... as a blue, at that moment, and then back off, and let a yellow grab it, while they left, having killed everything, but never trying to take it.

I am not saying that only red and yellow do it, I just witnessed it that time ..... and I have seen responses that could only happen if a person was sitting in my faction chat, while using discord to report to a guild, or whatever.

Get to KNOW some of the players in the faction you are in... chat with them, and coordinate .... hit multiple locations... some as diversions, some for real. Make the ball and zerg groups have to keep running all over, defending, and dealing with limited transits.....

I do play all 3 factions, depending on mood, and which character I want to use, although I am loyal to the faction I am currently playing... and I do try and build groups that communicate, while operating in pairs.... a 12 man group, divided up into 6 teams, hitting resources, causing mayhem, and more importantly, flooding an opponent with constant attacks that may, or may not, be serious can do FAR more than just running all over.
Then again, I was tactical military intelligence, years ago.... so maybe I just think differently.

Auldwulfe

This is exactly what my guild used to do when we fought other ball groups (or an Emperor/Hammer group) who cared about capturing keeps.

If we couldn't stop a group in the field, we'd coordinate and start hitting several of their back keeps and force them back on the defensive so our factions PUGs could start retaking our stuff.

The same tactic works if you're being gated. Instead of giving them action they can easily win at a keep, take a small group and start hit-and-running their resources until they split up to chase you and eventually your alliance can get a foothold.

The flaw with the plan is it doesn't work well against AP farmers who don't care about their own faction so long as they have a steady stream of players coming to recapture the keep they're farming at. And those types of groups have become more common and tougher to crack.

Marcus684

VaranisArano wrote: »

Auldwulfe wrote: »

The biggest weakness of any "ball group" is that they ARE a ball group.
They are in ONE place --- so fine, leave them.
When I see a huge zerg or ball group, and I KNOW we don't have enough defenders.... leave
You are not going to hold the castle, so don't give them extra points..... Focus your defense where you absolutely need it --- scrolls, etc. Anything else, you can reclaim, and get points for doing it.

Second, support, and encourage "roamers".... better single players, or 2 person teams.... they hit resources etc. You do NOT have to take a resource, just threaten it... make it flash on the map. Rig up 2 Ballista, and fire a couple times at a gate, and then leave .... keep making them travel all around, while you communicate and coordinate to cut transit lines, and slow them down, further.....

A ball group can't do much when 4 forts, and 6 resources suddenly flash as under attack... mind you, though... coordination might be difficult, as I have SEEN red players clear all the guards on a resource I had been fighting for... as a blue, at that moment, and then back off, and let a yellow grab it, while they left, having killed everything, but never trying to take it.

I am not saying that only red and yellow do it, I just witnessed it that time ..... and I have seen responses that could only happen if a person was sitting in my faction chat, while using discord to report to a guild, or whatever.

Get to KNOW some of the players in the faction you are in... chat with them, and coordinate .... hit multiple locations... some as diversions, some for real. Make the ball and zerg groups have to keep running all over, defending, and dealing with limited transits.....

I do play all 3 factions, depending on mood, and which character I want to use, although I am loyal to the faction I am currently playing... and I do try and build groups that communicate, while operating in pairs.... a 12 man group, divided up into 6 teams, hitting resources, causing mayhem, and more importantly, flooding an opponent with constant attacks that may, or may not, be serious can do FAR more than just running all over.
Then again, I was tactical military intelligence, years ago.... so maybe I just think differently.

Auldwulfe

This is exactly what my guild used to do when we fought other ball groups (or an Emperor/Hammer group) who cared about capturing keeps.

If we couldn't stop a group in the field, we'd coordinate and start hitting several of their back keeps and force them back on the defensive so our factions PUGs could start retaking our stuff.

The same tactic works if you're being gated. Instead of giving them action they can easily win at a keep, take a small group and start hit-and-running their resources until they split up to chase you and eventually your alliance can get a foothold.

The flaw with the plan is it doesn't work well against AP farmers who don't care about their own faction so long as they have a steady stream of players coming to recapture the keep they're farming at. And those types of groups have become more common and tougher to crack.

It's especially bad in Blackreach. When a GH ball group goes slumming there and just spends hours spoiling every keep fight by running inside and camping out in a tower or upstairs, it's super frustrating. There aren't usually any organized groups that can counter them so they have free reign to farm until they get bored. All the campaign regulars try and try to get the noobs and casuals to ignore the ball and stop getting farmed but they can't seem to. I really hope ZOS sees how much of a problem they've created and does something about it, but I'm not holding my breath. It seems like everything they've given us to combat ball groups has either been used by balls to become even more unbalanced, or proven to be all but useless.

Oblivion_Protocol

Part of the reason ball groups are so hard to beat is because of the level of coordination they have. I’ve run with a ball group guild a couple of times, and I can give some insight on how most of them operate. Not all of them, but most of them.

First off, everyone’s on Discord. You don’t get to join the ball group unless you’re in voice. Furthermore, the majority of ball groups have prescribed builds for damage dealers, and some will even make you duel people before getting to join.

Every group has a leader(s) that makes calls, similar to endgame raids. And endgame raid is an apt term because that’s how most ball groups treat Cyro. It’s not even about farming AP. It’s often about farming players and trolling.

Ball groups are 100% prepared for bombers. Barring extenuating circumstances like fighting another ball group or taking very coordinated burst damage, a ball group will NOT die to a solo bomber. Everyone chugs detect/immovability pots, AoEs are used on cooldown, and healers are just hammering their radiating regen button like monkeys. Every solo bomber we saw was shut down, pulled out of stealth, and left crucified as a warning to others.

However, most ball groups don’t take keeps/resources because they know that they would essentially gate the other factions in forty five minutes to an hour if they really wanted to. And that would absolutely kill Cyro, leaving them with nothing to do.

Also, most ball groups actually love to fight other ball groups because it provides an actual challenge beyond logistics. Running over pugs gets old pretty fast, and no individual dps in a ball group gets to deal any significant damage to any one target. You might get maybe one or two abilities off before the person melts.

All that said, the absolute full-stop solution to ball groups is controlling cross healing. You may think you’re not doing any damage to the group, but you actually are. I’ve taken Elf’s Bane cold fire siege hits, every type of bomb you can think of, and ulti dumps that left me at like 2% health, only to rocket back to full health in 0.2 seconds thanks to so many HoTs, my buff bar nearly takes up a third of my screen. And I was on one of those near-immortal Warden builds.

The counters to ball groups are legit counters. But they don’t matter when you can have so much healing that you could shrug off enough damage to kill any veteran trial boss twice over.

ShuttlePK

@Oblivion_Protocol I think nerfing crosshealing would be a good idea, however...

I lead a Ballgroup on PC/EU but the only thing people aren't accounting for is the adaptation that will come, I certainly wouldn't have an issue stacking Hiti's instances like done before, I certainly wouldn't mind stacking Almalexia instances if for example Echoing Vigor got a target cap, there is always an adaptation that will be done and there is simply no way around it, that is why Ballgroups have always been a topic of balance because they are the most efficient way to play and that should be how it is. If people spend so much time theorycrafting, testing, building chemistry etcetc they should be rewarded with that imo.

I do however think that alot of the ways ZoS have tried to counter Ballgroups outside of the crosshealing is a healthy way to balance it as there is plenty of pug zerg healers out there and we both know that nuking crosshealing would completely ruin alot of people's preferred playstyle of simply healing, sets like Snake in the Stars don't do enough damage, Plaguebreak has the right idea but again we just dropped Purge in group and it's also a really good set to bomb the zergs that chase Ballgroups with so we run it also, Dark Convergence needs to have the damage happen faster so that there is burst potential upon the pull, we have taken like 25k+ Convergence pulls simply because we didn't block it, granted it was a test to see what would happen if a certain amount of us got pulled the potential is there but done wrong.

An unpopular way of nerfing Ballgroups is actually looking at Snow Treaders, the ease of movement that mythic gives us kind of unholy. You have absolutely no power over the groups movement and it's a big reason why it's so hard for pugs to coordinate anything on them. I have no ideas myself on how to buff/nerf any of the sets mentioned above but like I said there will always be an adaptation it's simply always going to be like this, they even removed crosshealing completely in PvP and there was still Ballgroups, they weren't as strong of course they weren't but they were still able to just farm the same as today anywhere from 15-30min farming sessions, it's an obvious thing to take a look at but the end result won't change the problem that many people have, which is the power they bring and how they can't take it down with their casual unorganised group.

Crosshealing being removed is way too global of a change to be healthy for the game, its easily said if you don't play healer and just play some rat blade spamming cloak surfing your zerg but anyone who has any intention to do some healing to their team around them zerg or not just gets shutdown, there wasn't alot of people happy about it being removed last time

ShuttlePK

on a second note: the farming attempts at zergs will become even more intensive next patch (U39) as they introduce new monsters that give you 20k shields on pulls (which is the main way a Ballgroup initiates) so as far as we can tell the Ballgroup GvG or even just fighting eachother in general type of scene is going to be completely dead, at the top level of Ballgroups it's already hard enough to kill eachother and with more crutch stuff like this, it will be completely dead for sure, meaning we will all just resort to one thing... Farming the pugs and why bother killing eachother if we can't anymore.

Twig_Garlicshine

They removed out of group cross healing.

They didn't try limiting hot and buff stacking within groups.
1 of each unique hot/buff per person, instead of a buff/hot bar with 6+++ of the same things.
Sure my small mans would find it more challenging. The game should be challenging.
Healers should actually have to heal.
Buffers should actually have to buff.
Less auto play, and more decision making on the fly.

ShuttlePK

Not about it being more challenging when they already made siege unblockable, took months to fix Elf Bane bug the game atm is the easiest it ever has been for pugs yet they simply don't adapt in the same way Ballgroups do.

Not sure why you think it's more auto play than decision making, if the lead makes a bad decision for example sends the group to death and the entire group just blindly follows it without seeing its a bad decision and makes their own decision then you'd see alot more groups wipe instead of those 1 or 2 people who make a bad decision and die

Healers do actually have to heal, through several coldfires, several meatbags and all other kinds of siege, buffers is something that just simply doesn't exist in ESO when you can do healing/damage in a similar output to a full healer by wearing buff sets also.

ShuttlePK

just an example of how easy the game is for pugs, its hard enough for most groups to survive one oil in accordance to some other siege, but not one of those pugs engaged in actual player vs player combat it was just them pressing left click once, then off of siege holding left click with their Lightning Staff (which is fine) but they get a better result than 90% of the other players actually using builds to 'counter' Ballgroups, the game is entirely easy for pugs atm, it's up to them to not get farmed by not walking into every push, blocking Dark Con, tabbing the lead of the group and avoiding the push even before he comes into target range etcetc, but none of them take any action on doing any of those things Instead just nerf the groups that these casual/unorganised players refuse to adapt to, however I still agree the game is far too easy and that includes in Ballgroup.

ShuttlePK

There is alot of other ways to have them be less efficient, i.e tone the amount of defense that is possible to stack in this game, I mean Pain's Refuge, Major Prot, Minor Prot, Juggernaut CP all of which we are using just as an example, we don't have to lose anything to get all of those buffs the game is just far too heavy on the defense side and there simply won't be enough damage ever unless some form is toned down, a simple step forward would be looking at the Heal Aura sets like Sanctuary since healing scales alot higher than other things in this game that 10% is huge for anything to scale on.

Twig_Garlicshine

^^autoplay, also called autohealing^^
A lot of decision making is removed when you stack so many hots you no longer have a lot to worry about.

Why is seige used against ball groups so much?
Siege is the most reliable and consistent way to dump a ball group.
This is why ball groups are forever on the forums trying to get people to fight them with other means including lesser organized groups.
Not for the challenge, they know that any normal organized group will not have the same amount of hot stacking as they do.

Best advice for non-ball groups and everyone else:
1/ Siege is your go to.
2/ If number 1 is unavailable, just leave. Let them have their empty keep even if it costs scrolls.
If they have no one to roll over and stomp, they will not have fun, go elsewhere or maybe just maybe change their play style..

Disclaimer: I have nothing against organized groups (small mans are my preference), they are not the same as ball groups.
Ball groups are just exploiting hot stacking to change an organized group into a safer autoplay/autoheal group..

Tommy_The_Gun

Fkey wrote: »

^^autoplay, also called autohealing^^
A lot of decision making is removed when you stack so many hots you no longer have a lot to worry about.

Why is seige used against ball groups so much?
Siege is the most reliable and consistent way to dump a ball group.
This is why ball groups are forever on the forums trying to get people to fight them with other means including lesser organized groups.
Not for the challenge, they know that any normal organized group will not have the same amount of hot stacking as they do.

Best advice for non-ball groups and everyone else:
1/ Siege is your go to.
2/ If number 1 is unavailable, just leave. Let them have their empty keep even if it costs scrolls.
If they have no one to roll over and stomp, they will not have fun, go elsewhere or maybe just maybe change their play style..

Disclaimer: I have nothing against organized groups (small mans are my preference), they are not the same as ball groups.
Ball groups are just exploiting hot stacking to change an organized group into a safer autoplay/autoheal group..

Agreed. My biggest complain about ball group play-style (not players) is that a ball group for the most part can't kill other ball group. It is BIS play-style in PvP as it makes you resilient & kinda immortal vs almost everything - including being hit by multiple sieges at the same time.

So, the issue here is if a BIS play-style can not even be countered by another BIS (same) play-style then we are running into some kind of core balance problem. I mean there is a reason why ball groups avoid each other. Their goal is to farm as much AP as possible, so killing solos & zergs is much easier. By fighting other ball groups, both of them know that they may just wast time and not get any AP - and thus are ignoring each other.

Every other "effective" play-style that existed in PvP got nerfed at some point. Snipe ganikng is a prime example. Every play-style... except ball groups. The most serious nerf it ever received was the group size limit - but that had more to do with Cyro/IC population limits.

VaranisArano

Tommy_The_Gun wrote: »

Fkey wrote: »

^^autoplay, also called autohealing^^
A lot of decision making is removed when you stack so many hots you no longer have a lot to worry about.

Why is seige used against ball groups so much?
Siege is the most reliable and consistent way to dump a ball group.
This is why ball groups are forever on the forums trying to get people to fight them with other means including lesser organized groups.
Not for the challenge, they know that any normal organized group will not have the same amount of hot stacking as they do.

Best advice for non-ball groups and everyone else:
1/ Siege is your go to.
2/ If number 1 is unavailable, just leave. Let them have their empty keep even if it costs scrolls.
If they have no one to roll over and stomp, they will not have fun, go elsewhere or maybe just maybe change their play style..

Disclaimer: I have nothing against organized groups (small mans are my preference), they are not the same as ball groups.
Ball groups are just exploiting hot stacking to change an organized group into a safer autoplay/autoheal group..

Agreed. My biggest complain about ball group play-style (not players) is that a ball group for the most part can't kill other ball group. It is BIS play-style in PvP as it makes you resilient & kinda immortal vs almost everything - including being hit by multiple sieges at the same time.

So, the issue here is if a BIS play-style can not even be countered by another BIS (same) play-style then we are running into some kind of core balance problem. I mean there is a reason why ball groups avoid each other. Their goal is to farm as much AP as possible, so killing solos & zergs is much easier. By fighting other ball groups, both of them know that they may just wast time and not get any AP - and thus are ignoring each other.

Every other "effective" play-style that existed in PvP got nerfed at some point. Snipe ganikng is a prime example. Every play-style... except ball groups. The most serious nerf it ever received was the group size limit - but that had more to do with Cyro/IC population limits.

For what it's worth, it has been nerfed...it's just moved on to new tactics.

For example, take the current HoT-stacking meta. Used to be that there was a more balanced approach between HoT-stacking, heals, and Purges.

Then Plaguebreak was introduced. And suddenly Purges got you killed, so healers switched to more HoTs so that they could simply out-HoT the damage they used to purge.

A good analogy is PVE trials guilds. Their stuff gets nerfed, so they move on to the new meta, and perform just as good if not better.


I'm specifically reminded of the way ZOS played around with nerfing and buffing the Destro Staff ultimate years ago. Turns out when you nerf it, PVP guilds will use whatever's the next best thing. And when you buff it, yeah we died to it a bunch, but we also killed a lot more players with it...

I also remember there was a brief Earthgore meta in 2018 before it got nerfed. You ever fight a ball group where they get massive healing AND removed all ground based AOE effects on the group from a single proc? My guild did. It was nuts. Then ZOS nerfed it to only remove 1 ground based effect and the enemy guilds moved on to other builds.

ShadowProc

ShuttlePK wrote: »

on a second note: the farming attempts at zergs will become even more intensive next patch (U39) as they introduce new monsters that give you 20k shields on pulls (which is the main way a Ballgroup initiates) so as far as we can tell the Ballgroup GvG or even just fighting eachother in general type of scene is going to be completely dead, at the top level of Ballgroups it's already hard enough to kill eachother and with more crutch stuff like this, it will be completely dead for sure, meaning we will all just resort to one thing... Farming the pugs and why bother killing eachother if we can't anymore.

In one post you call nbs rat blades who play solo and the next you brag about farming pugs. Lol

ShadowProc

Fkey wrote: »

^^autoplay, also called autohealing^^
A lot of decision making is removed when you stack so many hots you no longer have a lot to worry about.

Why is seige used against ball groups so much?
Siege is the most reliable and consistent way to dump a ball group.
This is why ball groups are forever on the forums trying to get people to fight them with other means including lesser organized groups.
Not for the challenge, they know that any normal organized group will not have the same amount of hot stacking as they do.

Best advice for non-ball groups and everyone else:
1/ Siege is your go to.
2/ If number 1 is unavailable, just leave. Let them have their empty keep even if it costs scrolls.
If they have no one to roll over and stomp, they will not have fun, go elsewhere or maybe just maybe change their play style..

Disclaimer: I have nothing against organized groups (small mans are my preference), they are not the same as ball groups.
Ball groups are just exploiting hot stacking to change an organized group into a safer autoplay/autoheal group..

Buff siege again. When it was OP it was some of the funnest pvp I have had in this game. It was awesome. If they don't want to touch healing then buff siege.

When sets were introduced to counter them it back fired.

Buffing siege is the one true way to go after ball group Zos. It's the one thing they can't integrate into their group to make them even stronger.

Buff siege Zos. Plz. The majority liked it when it was.

TechMaybeHic

I think everyone that hates fighting ball groups should just not fight them. Just move to different objectives. Even if it means losing scrolls. Hard part is getting the randoms to do it, and they are the content that most the ball groups want. But if everyone does it enough; ball groups will take care of themselves by disbanding out of boredom or put their money where their mouth is, and go look for each other

Alharion

The day we get some answers from ZOS, we'll have to break out the champagne here, because apart from moving subjects around, that's all we see here. It's sad to see the extent to which this studio is banning the community between players and devs... Has ZOS forgotten the basic concept of a forum?

ShuttlePK

ShadowProc wrote: »

ShuttlePK wrote: »

on a second note: the farming attempts at zergs will become even more intensive next patch (U39) as they introduce new monsters that give you 20k shields on pulls (which is the main way a Ballgroup initiates) so as far as we can tell the Ballgroup GvG or even just fighting eachother in general type of scene is going to be completely dead, at the top level of Ballgroups it's already hard enough to kill eachother and with more crutch stuff like this, it will be completely dead for sure, meaning we will all just resort to one thing... Farming the pugs and why bother killing eachother if we can't anymore.

In one post you call nbs rat blades who play solo and the next you brag about farming pugs. Lol

Ratblades is just a term used for nightblades who are like rats, you try catch them they get away, not once did I brag about fighting pugs it's nothing to brag about I'd expect my group to be capable to killing unorganised players as an organised group that's just how it should be.

ShuttlePK

TechMaybeHic wrote: »

I think everyone that hates fighting ball groups should just not fight them. Just move to different objectives. Even if it means losing scrolls. Hard part is getting the randoms to do it, and they are the content that most the ball groups want. But if everyone does it enough; ball groups will take care of themselves by disbanding out of boredom or put their money where their mouth is, and go look for each other

Wouldn't mind it tbh, theres some consistent dodges from Ballgroups that would rather run than fight another Ballgroup, for the most part the ones that communicate to eachother simply just agree to place and time to fight and we go for it but there is always guilds that just won't and ye some would disband some would just go full GvG mode wouldn't mind either tbh.

TechMaybeHic

ShuttlePK wrote: »

TechMaybeHic wrote: »

I think everyone that hates fighting ball groups should just not fight them. Just move to different objectives. Even if it means losing scrolls. Hard part is getting the randoms to do it, and they are the content that most the ball groups want. But if everyone does it enough; ball groups will take care of themselves by disbanding out of boredom or put their money where their mouth is, and go look for each other

Wouldn't mind it tbh, theres some consistent dodges from Ballgroups that would rather run than fight another Ballgroup, for the most part the ones that communicate to eachother simply just agree to place and time to fight and we go for it but there is always guilds that just won't and ye some would disband some would just go full GvG mode wouldn't mind either tbh.

Yeah I know some do it regularly. Some only do it during coordinated times. And then there are quite a bit that seem to clearly avoid it and eve some that run more than 1 full group before they'd even attempt to engage another ball group

accidentalist

No comment.