The Rush of Agony Proc Set

sunandstars77

As a returning player to ESO and Cryodiil. I would like to try to understand the thought process of the brain child that made this set.

Seriously I really want to know. With no audio or visual cue and no counter play to this set in pvp.

Why? What are you trying to achieve by having a set like this in the game for pvp?

Joy_Division

Just people not understanding that just because something is cool or funny to do to NPCs, it does not translate to doing the same thing to actual players.

sunandstars77

The problem in compounded in Grey Host (CP Cryodiil) when you have players that have 2000+ cp and already deal and mitigate tremendous amounts of damage. Then slap a set like this in the game and are in a ball group. This is a terrible experience all round.

Desiato

sunandstars77 wrote: »

Why? What are you trying to achieve by having a set like this in the game for pvp?

ESO+ subs or DLC purchases by PVP players.

IMO, it's a failing strategy. Gimmicky sets like this seem more appealing than they actually are because they are a factor in driving legit PVP players from ESO, resulting in a disproportionate number of players who enjoy them.

I would bet proc set ganks and ball group mow-downs are the last experiences most players have in Cyrodiil.

xylena_lazarow

Nothing should ever go live in a video game until the devs have to play against it.

Completely idiotic that they give melee attacks cast times in the name of "counterplay" yet I'm still being instantly yanked 41m across the battlefield through terrain, without any sort of telegraph, visual effect, sound effect, etc... often by proc sets worn by tankhealbots who have neither engaged me nor even looked in my direction.

I have less problem with something like RoA, which is annoying but enables bombing, than single target pulls that only "benefit" zergers trying to chase solos. No zerger running a chain pull is helping their group, it's low grade trolling at best. Run AoE knockback like Repelling Explosion instead. Every solo you chain pull is another wipe for your zerg against a ball group.

TechMaybeHic

This set actually makes melee more punishing. It's a lot easier to avoid at range because you have that much more room to spread out away from squishy players you cannot control

Funny as a lot of people thought the delay and projectile treatment would make it better counterable but you can see it coming in time and they increased the range. It's definitely worse IMO

SaffronCitrusflower

sunandstars77 wrote: »

As a returning player to ESO and Cryodiil. I would like to try to understand the thought process of the brain child that made this set.

Seriously I really want to know. With no audio or visual cue and no counter play to this set in pvp.

Why? What are you trying to achieve by having a set like this in the game for pvp?

Free pull proc sets are just bad game design. Anything that moves another players location on the map should be a skill that costs resources and takes up a skill slot. Free proc pulls are just really bad game design and should be eliminated from the game.

kyle.wilson

Some of the new scribing skills give a better pull without requiring a 5 piece

SaffronCitrusflower

kyle.wilson wrote: »

Some of the new scribing skills give a better pull without requiring a 5 piece

I know. It's even worse game design than a free pull set.

Desiato

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

I have less problem with something like RoA, which is annoying but enables bombing, than single target pulls that only "benefit" zergers trying to chase solos. No zerger running a chain pull is helping their group, it's low grade trolling at best. Run AoE knockback like Repelling Explosion instead. Every solo you chain pull is another wipe for your zerg against a ball group.

I enjoy combat in a variety of scenarios from completely solo to playing among other players in large scale fights.

One scenario I enjoy are open fields fights between objectives between large groups of random players. I like front line melee fighting. I think these are the kinds of fights Cyrodiil was designed for and don't contribute a lot to server processing lag without a large organized group present.

So it's really annoying when I'm fighting unstacked among other players with single target abilities in a way that is extremely intuitive (unlike a ball group), and die to a pull set gank because of a vd proc added to the initial burst from a squishy or two who I wasn't close to before the pull. Often lag is such a significant factor, it's not possible to react on time.

Urzigurumash

Nibenay's Battlereeve. Perhaps not the ideal solution but a practical one. RoA will never bother you again.

fred4

TechMaybeHic wrote: »

Funny as a lot of people thought the delay and projectile treatment would make it better counterable but you can see it coming in time and they increased the range. It's definitely worse IMO

Were they thinking that? I never thought the change was anything but a flat out buff / fix of the set, and a big one at that. The pull was originally keyed on the attacker's starting location. I don't know whether that was true for all gap closers, but I believe it was true for Teleport Strike at the very least. Instead of pulling people at the target location, it would pull people at the starting location. Let's say you Ambushed into a zerg. The set of old would not pull that group together. Instead it would enact the pull at the start with the comical effect that, if a an enemy nightblade that you didn't even see was near you, you would pull that player out of cloak and with you into the zerg. However you wouldn't pull the zerg together.

In other words, the set was gimped to begin with. It never worked properly and that is probably why they added the 0.8s delay, even though I don't believe they stated this clearly and they certainly didn't state the implication clearly, which is that the set is now working properly and is, therefore, more powerful than before, not merely because of the larger radius of the pull. It also plays well. Teleport Strike is a very innocuous gap closer, because it is an actual teleport with no travel animation. You may not notice the nightblade until it's too late. The pull and subsequent explosion is perfectly timed to coincide with an ultimate, such as Soul Tether, that also deals AOE damage and stuns. It's an example of why delayed proc damage doesn't necessarily give targets time to react. Quite the contrary. The two second damage delay of this set plays perfectly. I would say this is intentional. At the end of the day it also has to be functional for the attacker and it is arguably an anti-group set. Gilliam the Rogue used to play nightblade. My suspicion is this may be his doing, e.g. tidying the set up to actually work properly. I have no comment on whether this is good or bad for the current meta. I haven't used it myself, except I think I tried it briefly, but I got solo ganked by a player doing the Agony / Soul Tether combo once, and it was strong even back then.

xylena_lazarow

Desiato wrote: »

So it's really annoying when I'm fighting unstacked among other players with single target abilities in a way that is extremely intuitive (unlike a ball group), and die to a pull set gank because of a vd proc added to the initial burst from a squishy or two who I wasn't close to before the pull.

It rewards players sitting in zero risk safety spamming ranged proc stacks, and punishes players who actually PvP.

fred4

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

Desiato wrote: »

So it's really annoying when I'm fighting unstacked among other players with single target abilities in a way that is extremely intuitive (unlike a ball group), and die to a pull set gank because of a vd proc added to the initial burst from a squishy or two who I wasn't close to before the pull.

It rewards players sitting in zero risk safety spamming ranged proc stacks, and punishes players who actually PvP.

I actually did notice being randomly pulled in Cyro as of late, without the Dark Convergence telegraph. Is that this set, though, or is the set a stand-in for the general issue? I had assumed it was a necro skill or some new, spell-crafted skill.

CameraBeardThePirate

Urzigurumash wrote: »

Nibenay's Battlereeve. Perhaps not the ideal solution but a practical one. RoA will never bother you again.

Nibenays won't save you if you get pulled by a ball group. That 15k shield ain't doing jack against a 60k+ damage spike.

Joy_Division

Urzigurumash wrote: »

Nibenay's Battlereeve. Perhaps not the ideal solution but a practical one. RoA will never bother you again.

RoA is bothersome no matter what I wear because it violates the core fundamental principle ZOS had in place a long, long time ago: when you are subject to a CC effect (which getting forcibly moved is), you get CC immunity. It's trash.

blktauna

Joy_Division wrote: »

Urzigurumash wrote: »

Nibenay's Battlereeve. Perhaps not the ideal solution but a practical one. RoA will never bother you again.

RoA is bothersome no matter what I wear because it violates the core fundamental principle ZOS had in place a long, long time ago: when you are subject to a CC effect (which getting forcibly moved is), you get CC immunity. It's trash.

CC immunity is a lie anyway, at least for me. I'm always rooted no matter the pots and'or skills I have running.

ROA is really annoying because there's now one guy in the ball group running it for the purpose described.

fred4

Joy_Division wrote: »

RoA is bothersome no matter what I wear because it violates the core fundamental principle ZOS had in place a long, long time ago: when you are subject to a CC effect (which getting forcibly moved is), you get CC immunity. It's trash.

blktauna wrote: »

CC immunity is a lie anyway, at least for me. I'm always rooted no matter the pots and'or skills I have running.

While I agree with the sentiment, a CC is a stun that prevents you from casting skills until you spend a GCD breaking free (thereby getting immunity) or you let the CC run out. Anything that doesn't do that isn't technically a (hard) CC and can't grant you immunity. CC immunity comes from breaking free, not from being CCd.

Roots and snares are not hard CCs. They neither technically CC you nor are they subject to CC immunity. They don't have a break free requirement / option. They never did. You can still cast skills. You might cast something like Race Against Time or you can dodge roll. Technically no core principles have been broken, only (maybe) the spirit of those principles.

That said, I believe roots, specifically, have had their own 3s cooldown / immunity for some time. This is something you benefit from if you are flat out Bombard-spammed, but otherwise it's arguably too short for you to notice this rule.

Snow Treaders would protect you against roots and snares. I think they may also protect against pulls, but I could very well be wrong here. Not that I think sacrificing another mythic and paying with lack of sprint is a good answer to something so basic. Snow Treaders have also been buggy in the past.

Funnily enough, (most) knockbacks seem to require breaking free and may grant CC immunity, and so does Dark Convergence. Rush of Agony is a deliberate exception. The set has been explicitly designed so you can still burst and stun people with your normal CC combo after targets have been pulled. Your actual hard CC only being in the subsequent combo is something that I'm sure proponents would say is needed for the set to be effective.

As usual the only thing at issue here, and so typically ironic, is that organised groups are using a set, most likely designed to hurt them, against single players. Groups have the luxury of outfitting one member with a set like this. Individuals who want to be all round players, and not bombers scrounging for opportunities, don't really have the same.

fred4

I assume the intention behind Rush of Agony was that it's an anti-group set. Given that all such sets have backfired, what if the proc condition was literally something like:

Will pull players within x meters that are part of the largest group within that range, e.g. players that are actually grouped. This would make the set strictly useable by individuals and small scalers against (ball) groups, and by indidividuals against small scalers. The single target of the gap closer need not be part of any group, however.

EDIT: I don't know if this is the answer, since it would still be effective in use by large groups against small ones, or even just against individuals. Something along those lines, though. You could literally stipulate the group(s) it pulls must have 6 people, or more.

Of course the origin of the set being Dread Cellar doesn't really fit, so this would have to be a PvP only limitation.

Bammlschwamml

I bet most players don't know all the differences between snare/slow, immobilize/root, silence, stun, knock back, knock down, knock into the air, off balance, disorient, fear, pull etc.

The game doesn't really teach us how cc works. And it's kind of complicated. Most content can be done without ever thinking about it. So why bother?

I really tried to learn as much as possible about cc, but i still struggle.

Sometimes it can be hard to see what's happening to your own char. And it can be even harder to find the right way to deal with it in time.

Performance issues and bugs don't help.

Knowing or not knowing when to block, dodge, cleanse, move out, break free etc. can make a huge difference in Cyrodiil. Many players underestimate how strong a mix of the right cc in the right moment can be.

Guilds and friends could help with that. But it's getting harder and harder to find informed players who are willing to teach others. Not even content creators (youtubers, streamers, guide writers etc.) are able to do it right.

We don't have enough average players in Cyrodiil anymore. There is a big gap between good players and not so good players. The low population cap and the change from 24 player groups to 12 player groups did not help.

Performance issues and bugs... well i think i already said this a million times... but they don't help and drive players away.

If they could finally fix Cyrodiil and raise the population cap, there is still a small chance (after 10 years) that more people will want to play pvp again. (Same with pve endgame)

A bigger community would make it easier to find enemies (and allies) on the same level, and it would make fighting more rewarding and fun.

I guess what i am trying to say is that tinkering with sets and skills right now is not going to make the experience in ESO much better. It's a huge waste of time and resources. Everything and everyone should be focused on fixing bugs and performance first. (Yes even the artists, managers, investors, players etc. could help somehow...)

Desiato

Bammlschwamml wrote: »

I bet most players don't know all the differences between snare/slow, immobilize/root, silence, stun, knock back, knock down, knock into the air, off balance, disorient, fear, pull etc.

This isn't an issue of understanding. In this thread, there are experienced players who have played since 2014 and understand the underlying mechanics.

Ultimately, it's about gameplay preferences and the kind of experiences we want to have in Cyrodiil. Proc sets of all kinds have been a contentious subject since day one. Pull and burst proc sets in particular. I would say back in 2016, the majority of players seemed to dislike them. We had a nice nickname for them that can't be shared in this forum which was pretty common. It wasn't procbard.

Even those who may not currently have a clear understanding of how all mechanics work know what they like and don't like in terms of gameplay.

It also relates to performance as ZOS has, multiple times, singled out procs as affecting server performance.

blktauna

fred4 wrote: »

Joy_Division wrote: »

RoA is bothersome no matter what I wear because it violates the core fundamental principle ZOS had in place a long, long time ago: when you are subject to a CC effect (which getting forcibly moved is), you get CC immunity. It's trash.

blktauna wrote: »

CC immunity is a lie anyway, at least for me. I'm always rooted no matter the pots and'or skills I have running.

While I agree with the sentiment, a CC is a stun that prevents you from casting skills until you spend a GCD breaking free (thereby getting immunity) or you let the CC run out. Anything that doesn't do that isn't technically a (hard) CC and can't grant you immunity. CC immunity comes from breaking free, not from being CCd.

Roots and snares are not hard CCs. They neither technically CC you nor are they subject to CC immunity. They don't have a break free requirement / option. They never did. You can still cast skills. You might cast something like Race Against Time or you can dodge roll. Technically no core principles have been broken, only (maybe) the spirit of those principles.

Break free rarely works for me ever. So for me CC immunity is a lie. I use root as a generic term.
dodgeroll has also become inconsistent. This is when I know its time to leave cyrodil and play something else.

Urzigurumash

CameraBeardThePirate wrote: »

Urzigurumash wrote: »

Nibenay's Battlereeve. Perhaps not the ideal solution but a practical one. RoA will never bother you again.

Nibenays won't save you if you get pulled by a ball group. That 15k shield ain't doing jack against a 60k+ damage spike.

Good point, I should caveat all of my comments with "in BGs".

CP Cyro for me is just seeing how long I can roll dodge thru a ballgroup before my BG queue pops, so I never even notice RoA there.

Joy_Division

fred4 wrote: »

Joy_Division wrote: »

RoA is bothersome no matter what I wear because it violates the core fundamental principle ZOS had in place a long, long time ago: when you are subject to a CC effect (which getting forcibly moved is), you get CC immunity. It's trash.

blktauna wrote: »

CC immunity is a lie anyway, at least for me. I'm always rooted no matter the pots and'or skills I have running.

While I agree with the sentiment, a CC is a stun that prevents you from casting skills until you spend a GCD breaking free (thereby getting immunity) or you let the CC run out. Anything that doesn't do that isn't technically a (hard) CC and can't grant you immunity. CC immunity comes from breaking free, not from being CCd.

Pull (as DK Chains) has given CC immunity since launch. So has Silver Leash. So have the stranglers from PvE.

This was how it was and should be.

React

Rush of Agony is fundamentally broken as it bypasses the CC rules by pulling players without stunning them or granting them CC immunity. Its hard to believe that so much time has passed since it was added without it being adjusted to be in line with other pulls.

Not only does it allow you to "double CC" players after stacking them, but the proc of the set itself can hit upwards of 10k at times.

Just a joke, really.