You have to do something about PVP Balance ZOS.

acastanza_ESO

You can't possibly think it's okay that there are neigh unkilable groups running around with 12 instances of Vigor and Regen constantly running.
Combine that with these groups chain casting barriers 8+, and you get a state where, in the game "balance" you've created, it is mathematically impossible to kill them in a fair fight.
But because of overtuned sets like Dark Convergence, Vicious Death, and Plaguebreak, they can obliterate any group that isn't running a similarly abusive setup.

Is this really your idea of game balance? Abuse overtuned healing until you can line up an overtuned bomb that, more than likely, exploited lag and desync to get the first kill in an uncounterable chain reaction?

There are so many easy adjustments that could improve the state of the game here, like making it so you can not benefit from more than two instances of any given heal at a time (particularly vigor or regen). (I.e. the extremely popular position of fixing heal stacking)

Or, here's a crazy one, make Barrier a synergy that you have to take so it has a cooldown of 20 seconds instead of being able to chain cast an 8+ person constant barrier rotation.

How about making healing no longer scale from damage stats and instead scale it off of max Stam/Mag so you can't build fully into damage and still be able to pump out crazy group heals.

How about restoring counter-play to LoS-ing by making things like resource towers destructible again as they were intended to be, so groups can't have an indefinite point to both keep keeps flagged from, recover inside of, and use as a perfect choke point?

How on Nirn has the state of the game been alloed to become so completely unbalanced with seemingly no attempt to make simple, meaningful, adjustments?

It feels like it's completely impossible to get anyone at ZOS to even listen, let alone take these issues seriously.

JerBearESO

Let's try a campaign with no cross healing/shielding

CameraBeardThePirate

JerBearESO wrote: »

Let's try a campaign with no cross healing/shielding

Just lock it to the strongest instance or strongest 2 instances of healing for each specific skill

React

They haven't even commented on PVP balance in years. We have no idea whether they're happy with any 12 man group being nigh unkillable unless they're vastly outnumbered, whether they're happy with just about anybody being able to effortlessly survive 1v1 scenarios by not fighting back, whether they're okay with most "damage" builds having 38-42k hp and 2-3 proc damage sets...

The game has reached disgusting levels of imbalance. The enjoyment has gone straight out of it. I just don't understand why they aren't making any adjustments - it's as if there quite literally is nobody employed at the studio who's job encompasses making balance changes in regards to PVP. When we had similar issues in years past, they'd almost always be addressed in a 1-2 patch time frame - this meta has been going on for over a year now.

I wrote a very detailed post explaining many of the issues regarding PVP balance several patches ago - and since nothing has changed since then, essentially every thing in that post is still 100% relavent today. I'll drop the link to that post here in hopes that maybe somebody at zenimax sees it.

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/621381/pvp-balance-in-u37-in-depth-balance-suggestions/p1

@ZOS_BrianWheeler

The_Lex

React wrote: »

it's as if there quite literally is nobody employed at the studio who's job encompasses making balance changes in regards to PVP.

There probably isn't. And even if such an employee exists, they're doing double-duty with PvE, which will always take precedence in ZOS' paradigm.

React

Wanted to also drop this screenshot from several months ago - here is what your buff tracker looks like while standing inside of your average 12 man on PC NA.

11 echoing vigors and 2 radiating regens. These guys weren't even in combat either - they were just standing on a ram at a completely empty keep.

CameraBeardThePirate

Was running in a 12 man last night. Not a single true healer - just a ton of Wardens with Polar Wind, a handful of Rush of Agony pulls, and all 12 players running Echoing Vigor. We were pretty much unkillable and we were all on DPS builds with well over 6-7k weapon damage and 35k-40k HP. We cut down groups much larger than us, and didn't need any practice or coordination besides "stick on crown, ult when crown pulls".

Cross healing has gotten out of hand.

Syiccal

React wrote: »

Wanted to also drop this screenshot from several months ago - here is what your buff tracker looks like while standing inside of your average 12 man on PC NA.

11 echoing vigors and 2 radiating regens. These guys weren't even in combat either - they were just standing on a ram at a completely empty keep.

This is exactly why it becomes impossible to kill 12 man Co ordinates groups, even some uncoordinated groups in cyro..the problem is they won't remove HoT stacking as it will kill the 'healer' role in pvp if they are not able to share heals.

React

Syiccal wrote: »

React wrote: »

Wanted to also drop this screenshot from several months ago - here is what your buff tracker looks like while standing inside of your average 12 man on PC NA.

11 echoing vigors and 2 radiating regens. These guys weren't even in combat either - they were just standing on a ram at a completely empty keep.

This is exactly why it becomes impossible to kill 12 man Co ordinates groups, even some uncoordinated groups in cyro..the problem is they won't remove HoT stacking as it will kill the 'healer' role in pvp if they are not able to share heals.

Limiting cross heals wouldn't affect the healer role at all. The majority of these echoing casts are coming from "dps" and "support" players in the group, because every member has it slotted.

Limiting hot stacking, if anything, would actually bring value to the healer role and necessitate having 2-3 actual healers in the group, since the DPS and supports wouldn't be able to contribute to the 12+ stacks of same morph hots anymore.

CameraBeardThePirate

React wrote: »

Syiccal wrote: »

React wrote: »

Wanted to also drop this screenshot from several months ago - here is what your buff tracker looks like while standing inside of your average 12 man on PC NA.

11 echoing vigors and 2 radiating regens. These guys weren't even in combat either - they were just standing on a ram at a completely empty keep.

This is exactly why it becomes impossible to kill 12 man Co ordinates groups, even some uncoordinated groups in cyro..the problem is they won't remove HoT stacking as it will kill the 'healer' role in pvp if they are not able to share heals.

Limiting cross heals wouldn't affect the healer role at all. The majority of these echoing casts are coming from "dps" and "support" players in the group, because every member has it slotted.

Limiting hot stacking, if anything, would actually bring value to the healer role and necessitate having 2-3 actual healers in the group, since the DPS and supports wouldn't be able to contribute to the 12+ stacks of same morph hots anymore.

Once again, all together now:

Limiting HoT stacking would do nothing but improve the meta.

acastanza_ESO

CameraBeardThePirate wrote: »

React wrote: »

Syiccal wrote: »

React wrote: »

Wanted to also drop this screenshot from several months ago - here is what your buff tracker looks like while standing inside of your average 12 man on PC NA.

11 echoing vigors and 2 radiating regens. These guys weren't even in combat either - they were just standing on a ram at a completely empty keep.

This is exactly why it becomes impossible to kill 12 man Co ordinates groups, even some uncoordinated groups in cyro..the problem is they won't remove HoT stacking as it will kill the 'healer' role in pvp if they are not able to share heals.

Limiting cross heals wouldn't affect the healer role at all. The majority of these echoing casts are coming from "dps" and "support" players in the group, because every member has it slotted.

Limiting hot stacking, if anything, would actually bring value to the healer role and necessitate having 2-3 actual healers in the group, since the DPS and supports wouldn't be able to contribute to the 12+ stacks of same morph hots anymore.

Once again, all together now:

Limiting HoT stacking would do nothing but improve the meta.

The is one of those things where the playerbase all but unanimously agrees that it would be good and healthy for the game, but ZOS's combat team as stuck their collective heads firmly into the sand. We need accountability, and we need it fast.

Alharion

The TESO pvp is certainly the image of a most indigestible pvp ever seen in an MMORPG of its recent times (good after, I didn't do it either: D), but here there is the BG mode or one looks like the hardcore mode of call of duty and another where the game tanks or the tanking aspect is king, not to mention the dominance meta aspect of some weapons that will be the most cheated and meta stuff that will have the right to play. It is also where we see how incredibly unfair the weapons are.

They tried a PVP Guild Wars, but as a result of the races, the pvp became uncontrollable for the studio, so much so that they end up ignoring everything they are doing and even to the point of ignoring the community itself it is clearly not the right thing to do when made an MMORPG, we assume its condition and especially the pve and PVP community, there is very little dialog here with the community surely an ultra-protocol studio, I imagine, but an MMO requires exchange between the community and the duties see responsible otherwise it ends up going straight into the wall and here, c That's clearly what's happening.

I don't know if the PVP would be reshaped one day, but at least as things stand, it no longer makes you want to waste your time on TESO and with the new class the PVP has become even worse than ever, this class radically prevents the assassin from playing with a ray (forgive me for saying so) but the ray is the most indigestible thing it is for PVP, besides the rays seem to be quite WTF its last times spilling abominable damage.

I hope that ZOS will change their mindset especially if they want to do more MMORPG in the future, because, remember that the image of the first MMORPG of a studio is never forgotten by players and besides, many MMORPGs seem to be coming up for the next few years, so it is better for them not to neglect what they are now doing on TESO if they do not want to see their community go to the competition!

Tommy_The_Gun

JerBearESO wrote: »

Let's try a campaign with no cross healing/shielding

It is not cross healing that is a problem. It is stacking same instances of same affect with no cap. You can have 10+ Vigors and Radiant Regeneration and the result is that you can outheal multiple siege weapons hitting you at the same time with absolutely ZERO investment in stats that healing scales off.

ZOS already tried once to disable cross healing as they were experimenting with server optimizations. The result was that the only one who was left in Cyro were ball groups. There were even threads here on forums in which ball group players were complaining that all they fight are other ball groups... which was a hilarious karma twist tbh.

JerBearESO

CameraBeardThePirate wrote: »

JerBearESO wrote: »

Let's try a campaign with no cross healing/shielding

Just lock it to the strongest instance or strongest 2 instances of healing for each specific skill

I don't think this would work out as easily as it sounds. The ball groups would find ways. For example, a combination of various types of heals and shields. There are a lot after all, especially once you include set effects.

CameraBeardThePirate

JerBearESO wrote: »

CameraBeardThePirate wrote: »

JerBearESO wrote: »

Let's try a campaign with no cross healing/shielding

Just lock it to the strongest instance or strongest 2 instances of healing for each specific skill

I don't think this would work out as easily as it sounds. The ball groups would find ways. For example, a combination of various types of heals and shields. There are a lot after all, especially once you include set effects.

Ok, but at that point they're having to put in actual work for an actual group comp. I'd rather ball groups go into Cyrodiil with a bunch of different HoTs ticking than 12 instances of the same HoT.

And of course ballgroups will find ways - that's by design. The game rewards grouping up. I'm under no delusion that removing HoT stacking would kill ballgroups. It WOULD help the meta though.

TechMaybeHic

I was going to once again disagree with making healing and damage scale from different stats, but how about healing others require a separate stat?

So to heal others you need to dedicate, but self preservation still exists to not just make us have to go to the tired old Trinity. Many of us like this game because you can be independent. And HOT stacks would require dedicated healers

DrNukenstein

If you nerf the in combat sustain, you force specialization through choosing what you use your resources for.

Such a nerf to sustain could be tied to battle spirit to protect the softhearted PVE'ers.

I say it on every pvp balance thread I see. It's not that someone can full heal. It's that they have enough juice to break free, roll, full heal then immediately go on the offensive and 8 seconds later they will have enough juice to do it again.

If such a play pattern were impossible, then immense decision making would happen when you break that stun. Do you risk going on offense because healing would leave you with no juice for several seconds? Do you have enough space to pool some juice? Do you block instead of roll, eating the mitigated follow up but saving some green stuff? Should I maybe just run away?

If the main flow of PVP is that kills happen when a target is out of juice, then better balance can be achieved by making do it all builds run out of juice when they try to do it all.

JerBearESO

CameraBeardThePirate wrote: »

JerBearESO wrote: »

CameraBeardThePirate wrote: »

JerBearESO wrote: »

Let's try a campaign with no cross healing/shielding

Just lock it to the strongest instance or strongest 2 instances of healing for each specific skill

I don't think this would work out as easily as it sounds. The ball groups would find ways. For example, a combination of various types of heals and shields. There are a lot after all, especially once you include set effects.

Ok, but at that point they're having to put in actual work for an actual group comp. I'd rather ball groups go into Cyrodiil with a bunch of different HoTs ticking than 12 instances of the same HoT.

And of course ballgroups will find ways - that's by design. The game rewards grouping up. I'm under no delusion that removing HoT stacking would kill ballgroups. It WOULD help the meta though.

I see, good point. I personally want to see the unkillable ball group concept removed entirely by design, as it has never been healthy for the game in my experience. I do agree group play should be rewarding, but not to the extent it currently is. I'm a solo player and the only counterplay to ball groups is to log off the majority of the time. There's supposed to be set based counterplay, but I have found it to be defensively countered by these groups altogether. Kinda takes out the fun. I often abandon cyro to escape this, play a few BGs, and log off. I wonder how much of ESOs potential PvP player base ZoS has unwittingly lost to this....

FENGRUSH

CameraBeardThePirate wrote: »

JerBearESO wrote: »

CameraBeardThePirate wrote: »

JerBearESO wrote: »

Let's try a campaign with no cross healing/shielding

Just lock it to the strongest instance or strongest 2 instances of healing for each specific skill

I don't think this would work out as easily as it sounds. The ball groups would find ways. For example, a combination of various types of heals and shields. There are a lot after all, especially once you include set effects.

Ok, but at that point they're having to put in actual work for an actual group comp. I'd rather ball groups go into Cyrodiil with a bunch of different HoTs ticking than 12 instances of the same HoT.

And of course ballgroups will find ways - that's by design. The game rewards grouping up. I'm under no delusion that removing HoT stacking would kill ballgroups. It WOULD help the meta though.

What is dead may never die.

Time to rip.

Weckless

I'm cool with most of it except separating healing from damage. I play mostly solo and that would be impossible if that change went through

Urzigurumash

Many of us have written a thousand things here and taken tremendous pleasure in doing so.

But all of those posts were - like the mortal souls that wrote them - confused and convoluted, fickle and self-absorbed.

As much as I agree with many of the things written both by famous PvPers and rambling nobodies like me:

Ignore all of them, there is only one avenue of balance in PvP that should be explored for a very long time:

Adjust the Battlespirit Modifiers

(I agree with @JerBearESO as they said in another thread, change Battlespirit to -90% Healing, -80% Damage. This may achieve the general "Sustain Penalty" as described by @DrNukenstein , with which I agree very much and to which I alluded in my beautiful poll "DK needs a 13% Damage Nerf")

mmtaniac

Too control pvp they should add more frequent balance patches one per month and every balance patch should be changed only through battle spirit classes should be balanced through battle spirit on pvp. Some classes are weaker becasues battle spirit and should be balanced different than others in few aspects especially i mean Backslash ability that are double dipped in battle spirit and less popular skill Sun Shield that is double dipped too and maybe few skills i don't know on other classes.

Udrath

There are so many problems right now it would take forever to write it all down. PVP is either too fast or way to slow like now. They haven’t been able to find that perfect pace like we had in the past.

Ball groups have really ruined pvp for most people.
Not the organised pick up group of friends where it’s a bunch of solo builds working together on comms, but the crown stacking and everyone has a role ball groups. They look like a speed run PVE group in gameplay and bring zero immersion or good fights to the battlefield. And the worse part is it’s a kinda a PvP community issue, because they choose to ball group knowing the playstyle lags out everyone and most people do not respect it

Norith_Gilheart_Flail

Cyrodiil caters to all play styles,though it does imply teamwork by the fact you generally can't solo a keep, and expects faction cooperation.

To say as a single, solo player that your enjoyment carries more weight than the 10 or whatever people in a groups experience, is detached from reality.

Cyrodiil is still the best version of this type of game play out there, with GW2 not quite hitting the scratch.

But what it does do right is the reward tracks.

the1andonlyskwex

DrNukenstein wrote: »

If you nerf the in combat sustain, you force specialization through choosing what you use your resources for.

Such a nerf to sustain could be tied to battle spirit to protect the softhearted PVE'ers.

I say it on every pvp balance thread I see. It's not that someone can full heal. It's that they have enough juice to break free, roll, full heal then immediately go on the offensive and 8 seconds later they will have enough juice to do it again.

If such a play pattern were impossible, then immense decision making would happen when you break that stun. Do you risk going on offense because healing would leave you with no juice for several seconds? Do you have enough space to pool some juice? Do you block instead of roll, eating the mitigated follow up but saving some green stuff? Should I maybe just run away?

If the main flow of PVP is that kills happen when a target is out of juice, then better balance can be achieved by making do it all builds run out of juice when they try to do it all.

I wouldn't exclude PvE from such a change. Excessive baseline sustain is a big part of why sustain races and sets aren't considered competitive in endgame PvE.

JanTanhide

There is no such thing as "Balance" in PVP. Never will be. Can't be done. Been in this game since the beginning. I've seen hundreds of these threads all asking for the same thing. Not Gonna Happen.

It MIGHT happen if ZOS would ever separate PVE from PVP as has been asked for near a decade. Until then no such thing as balance.

TechMaybeHic

I often find a lot I agree with in posts; but then I see things that seem to me are preference more than what would actually address balance. Maybe it's a matter of perspective, but I do not like talks of basically changing from a free for all building of characters, to an enforced trinity role, or mold the game to make races more appealing rather than just addressing the races that need something different.

Just more attention to specific issues directly rather than fundamentally changing the game is way more appealing to me. Afterall; the game must not be too broken that I bother still playing it with such awful performance

Sylosi

Zavijah_Arventi wrote: »

Cyrodiil is still the best version of this type of game play out there, with GW2 not quite hitting the scratch.

It's not an accident that GW2's WvW has always been more successful than Cyrodiil, it's better and always has been.

And funnily enough part of the reason for that is it's better for both guilds and pug groups. When this game launched many of us came with our guilds from GW2, Warhammer, etc to try out Cyrodiil, few stayed. The main reason for that, especially for those of us in fight / GvG guilds is the combat in this game is bad for guild vs guild (too much healing, no buff strips, very one dimensional, etc), which is why most of us ended up in GW2 back then (your choices are limited for this sort of PvP).

But GW2 was also better for pugs, they added 50 man squads which made grouping easier, the gear system has less extremes of cheese than ESO and is easier to acquire, so you weren't carried as hard by gear in an organised group as you are in this game. Similar thing with combat mechanics, for example there are certain skills in GW2 that either don't stack at all (auras for example) or only stack in duration, but not in intensity such as regeneration. Which made the difference between pugs and a guild less severe (and a bad guild less severe still), which was good for the health of the game.

The result of that is not only that guild vs guild fights were much better than in Cyrodil, but so were pug vs guild fights, which had the added benefit of it making it much more common for guild players to pug it when it wasn't a guild raid day or after the guild raid had finished. The benefit of that was not only did it improve the pugs (well some of them), but it brought organisation, it was largely guild players that got on Discord (or TS back in the day) and got pugs to join Discord, play proper builds, etc.

Where as in ESO what you ended up with were pugs that for most part are adverse to organisation, then often even the ones that do get "organised" think joining a group, playing whatever build they want, led by a guy commanding in text chat is "organised" pug play. So to an extent it's their own fault, but only to an extent...

Whilst at the same time you ended up with the weirdly named "ball groups" that role-play running around the top floor of a keep for 30 mins against unorganised pugs is "skilled" or engaging Pvp gameplay. The last time I joined an organised group in this game the result was that after 40 mins we had fought one other organised group once with the rest of time mostly in the one keep "fighting" pugs, so I then made my excuses and left out of pure boredom.

I've literally played in pug groups in GW2 that are more "PvP" than most of the ball-groups in this game...

Twohothardware

Group heal stacking definitely needs a hard change from the current system and damage in Cyrodiil needs to be increased.

Every player is a tank now with 30-40K health. Even with a perfectly timed combo you can’t burst players down like you used to which is why large groups have such an advantage.

Luckylancer

Stacking same buffs over each other is a problem but removing it is not the fix. Even if you limit it to 2 strongest ones, people will stac other heals. 2 warden artic winds, 2 vigors, 2 regenerations, 2 chakram shields etc. Also ball groups can use different heal sets.

I dont know what is the fix but limiting cross heal at abilitiy level wont have the expected results imo.

Sylosi wrote: »

Zavijah_Arventi wrote: »

Cyrodiil is still the best version of this type of game play out there, with GW2 not quite hitting the scratch.

Whilst at the same time you ended up with the weirdly named "ball groups" that role-play running around the top floor of a keep for 30 mins against unorganised pugs is "skilled" or engaging Pvp gameplay.

Ball group name comes from gaming. Example: death ball from starcraft 2, usually protoss

xDeusEJRx

I'm sure zos plans to do something about the balance, they will introduce 3 new proc sets next cycle to address the balance.

I jokingly said it in another thread, but I genuinely think they might make an anti-proc set to punish proc set users at some point down the line