Azureblight nerf needed

Nathanbreakfast · August 4

"I've already have been roasted and harassed in zone chat about this post, I'm one to never report people, but since i know your doing it because you have seen my post on here, this is your warning because next time i see it i will be reporting you."

Extremely embarrassing behavior.

ToRelax · August 4

Xanttious wrote: »

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO wrote: »

Photosniper89 wrote: »

To all those people saying its fine... throw caltrops down on the entry of a door and you can't walk in without being blown to bits. You now have to take at min 2 walls down to get anything done when running across a group who runs blight. I can't imagine being so... (gonna censor myself here) that you run a azure blight comp.

if only skills existed in game which removed ground effects in the radius of a breach and prevented their casting for a short duration.

[...]
My 2 rules is to stick on crown, and 32k health or higher.There is no point to run in a group if your not on crown (or around crown) your not helping the group. In fact you become a hindrance on the group imo in your not and we have to take the time to find out where you are to rez you ect.
[...]

Given that you admittedly don't even specialize the group builds for these groups. If your players die as soon as they don't stack on top of one another, then they should absolutely die when doing just that. Incomprehensible how you would even expect anything else.

Xanttious · August 4

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

Xanttious wrote: »

but if it starts to become mainstream people will start complaining.

Azure will never be mainstream because it's a miserable grind and 100% worthless outside its niche of blowing up ball groups, who have grown spoiled from never ever having to deal with hard counters to their strat. They play the same for years, never a need to adapt, because ZOS keeps nerfing the hell out of anything that might actually threaten them, while adding things like Arc group shields and Snow Treaders which delete yet more counterplay.

Nobody is entitled to never die.

You say this now, casue yes LoM is one of the worst dungeons to grind, but with the stickerbook and the upcoming undaunted event it makes it ALOT easier to farm and have ready.

As far as the dying part, i could careless. Its a video game. You can ask anyone that has ran with me past or present. Hell ill tell my group to mount up (play rough riders in discord) and see who can make it into a heavy sieged keep just for the lol's. I'm out there to have fun. Even if we die in are ball group whether its groups fault or not, i put the blame on myself. You should never demoralize or persecute a person for messing up in a video game. When all you have to do is respawn and try again.

Also as i've said before ball groups are pretty easy to kill if you know how. Negates, pulls, fears, and siege. Keeping pressure on them so they don't have time for their resources to generate. Also don't forget "Blockie-Walkie" my callout to the group when you see a pull about to happen(thats one of the main reasons ball groups are so effective with their groups, no one knows how to block and walk out of the damage point).The means to kill them are already out there. This applies to 95% (made that number up casue i can only think of a few groups this doesn't apply to) and the only reason it doesn't apply to the other 5% is casue you have 12 HIGHLY skilled players in the same group. Ones that all could easily go out there and 1vX on their own. But your average ball group this isn't the case. Who let friends ect in that might not be as skilled as other because they just want them as part of their group, and/or they are looking for fills. Ball groups are as strong as their weakest member.

xylena_lazarow · August 4

Xanttious wrote: »

But your average ball group this isn't the case.

Being organized doesn't entitle you to a 100% win rate against zergs. Being able to call out in zone "hey this ball group is average, come zerg them down" is good for the game. Having to say "don't bother, these guys are nigh immortal and will farm you for the next two hours" is bad for the game.

Xanttious · August 4

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

Xanttious wrote: »

But your average ball group this isn't the case.

Being organized doesn't entitle you to a 100% win rate against zergs. Being able to call out in zone "hey this ball group is average, come zerg them down" is good for the game. Having to say "don't bother, these guys are nigh immortal and will farm you for the next two hours" is bad for the game.

your confusing organized with skilled. Any group can go out there and be organized. Just casue your organized doesn't mean you have skill. My "casual groups" are organized to the extent as yes we are all in coms, but as i stated above sets or even classes are not. This doesn't make everyone in my groups skilled players, even if we are comped correctly.

I tell my ball group all the time this when it comes to comp, and i'm going to name drop a guild here but the intent is to prove a point. What i always tell them is this. "We could run Drac's exact comp, skill for skill, cp for cp, set for set. This doesn't make us Drac. Drac was effective the way they were casue they were 12 HIGHLY skilled players."

xylena_lazarow · August 4

Xanttious wrote: »

What i always tell them is this. "We could run Drac's exact comp, skill for skill, cp for cp, set for set. This doesn't make us Drac. Drac was effective the way they were casue they were 12 HIGHLY skilled players."

What is your complaint then? If you develop Drac's competitive skill, you'll stop dying to Azure. If you want to continue playing casually, you'll have to accept losing to competitive strats. Seems fair to me.

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO · August 4

@Xanthius I think this is an issue of tactics then. You need to understand the benefit vs risk of stacking when you play as a group (whatever style).
Without a comp and setup it is much more of a risk than benefit of stacking on crown. By all means players should still play 'around' a crown as a focus point but stacking isn't beneficial because players aren't buffing each other in the same way.

For example in a pug group you'd be better off saying everyone push in best you can - some people stay out healing those going in then come in as a second wave, some people go in and spread out to kite around the keep etc.

TechMaybeHic · August 4

The benefit of not being a ball group is flexibility to spread out. Still want to focus target, but it's easier than ever now with how strong ranged is

Joy_Division · August 4

My guess is the flack that you feel is being directed here is primarily being directed at "ball groups" and the idea a counter to "ball groups" should be nerfed.

A different phrasing of the original post would not have mattered because the last post concerned about a set/mechanic harming a PuG group was probably from the last decade. People know what Azure does, who uses it, and why. If a whole bunch of people want to go farming Azureblight and use it instead of Tarnished or Scavenging Maw, I for one will be happy, grateful, and enjoy my Cyodiil experiences much more so. It's not a concern to me at all.

That being said, I do appreciate the difficulty to trying to pug herd and compete with just 12 randoms or a casual collection of players who just bring their solo oriented gear. Cyrodiil being what it is now makes is basically impossible for LFG 12 groups to do anything but PvDoor an undefended keep because by now most players have settled into their routines (solo / small group / organized guild) so you're picking mostly inexperience players running around with 24K health. Nerfing the Azureblight set isn;t going to help this situation because the factors working against Pug herding run way too deep. When you have a small population comprised of mostly experienced players and highly skilled organized groups, there's zero shot a PuG group is going to do anything significant. What needs to happen to make LFGs actually fun to be in is to create a Cyrodiil with a larger and more varied population, such that they could accomplish something on the map occasionally aside from getting steamrolled.

sunshineflame · August 4

This set is designed to counter max sized groups that fight closely packed. If you want to gain all the benefits from mobbing and exploiting heal stacking and mitigation then you should have at least 1 counter and this niche set is it. I'm sorry there is only 1 way from a player to counter your playstyle designed to be unstoppable, but maybe...git gud.

Xanttious · August 4

Like I've said, i wanted to bring attention to this set because i feel the way the stacks are given out is over powered, I have said my peace, and maybe Zos will at least look into it.

A lot of the posts on here have been not been useful, nor warranted because they have nothing to back them up other then personal opinion and/or bias to ball groups. For those that have posted, whether for or against it getting nerfed, that have given given useful information, i thank you for taking the time out of your day to post.

I'll revisit this once i've done what i said i'm going to do and make it more main stream in my "casual groups". If there still isn't a problem then, then there isn't but i don't foresee this being the case.

Until then thanks again to those with useful posts, and see you all out on the battle field

Katzenzunge · August 4

Xanttious wrote: »

I'll revisit this once i've done what i said i'm going to do and make it more main stream in my "casual groups". If there still isn't a problem then, then there isn't but i don't foresee this being the case.

Wow.

Turtle_Bot · August 5

Azureblight seems perfectly fine to me in PvP and only seems slightly problematic in PvE due to it's unique interaction with specifically Arcs beam.

Haven't seen it pop up on my feed at all this entire event despite being near large zergs almost every time I am online (it's the only way really to gain AP effectively if you are not part of a ball group/organized small scale). On the super rare occasion I have seen this set, it has always been part of a HIGHLY SKILLED and super organized small scale group (that is almost a mini-ball themselves) that has been specifically tailored to combat ball groups (and even then the top ball groups still steamroll these small scale groups 90% of the time because the playstyle is just that overpowered).

Seems to me as though this set is doing what it is intended to do, be an effective counter to a specific playstyle that has been sorely lacking any good counterplay for far too long now (outside of playing that specific playstyle yourself).

If this set is "effective against your casual groups" as claimed, then it seems to me as though you are running 2 different ball groups, just with different skill levels (the skilled ball for a few hours and the unskilled ball the rest of the time). This set is worse than plaguebreak against zergs/unorganized/casual groups and yet I haven't seen any complaints this event of plaguebreak (despite being far more prevalent than Azure).

As someone who has played almost every single group playstyle at some point over a near decade of PvP in this game, I speak from experience that this set is much less of an issue (bordering on a non-issue), than even current post-nerf plaguebreak/dark convergance is for every grouped playstyle except the highly organized, tightly stacked ball groups. Rush of Agony is infinitely more problematic for casual groups than Azure, yet RoA is mediocre against other ball groups unless 1 BG is significantly higher skilled than the other.

adirondack · August 5

This has been an interesting discussion with some valid points all around. The primary takeaway for me is that I have to farm my most hated dungeon again. Cheers all.

Tcholl · August 5

My issue with azureblight is that groups are using many players with this set to kill from range. The issue is not solo players fighting groups, but groups that abuse the set. Some times we have more than one group using 5 or more azures and running around together. The effects should diminish if you have too many players using it together.

This affects everyone, not only groups, specially on closed quarters. In my opinion, this adds up to the actual ranged meta, which is boring.

I am not ok with any set that allows a group to keep spamming range skills (looking at you caltrops) and blow people up. This is not the fight we want, to say the least.

I keep an add on myself, at all times while in cyro, only to warn how many azure seeds I have. If you need an add on to survive a set, something is not right.

It is not a huge problem most of the times, but it has potential to ruin many fights and pvp sessions.

xylena_lazarow · August 5

Tcholl wrote: »

ranged meta, which is boring

I'm starting to think I'd rather play a proper shooter than this disaster of a meta. I miss the 2h/DW full melee days. It's never just one Tarnished Proc, and that's just the surface of toxic ranged damage builds right now.

Veinblood1965 · August 5

I'm going to get my guildies to start carrying this set around to counter ball groups. It's good info.

ZOS_Icy · August 5

Greetings,

We have recently removed some unnecessary back and forth from this thread. This is a reminder to keep the discussion civil and constructive. Please keep our Community Rules in mind moving forward.

Thank you for your understanding.

acastanza_ESO · August 5

This is the only thing in the game that currently counters the abject abuse of game mechanics that ballgroups rely on. The set is working as intended and unless ZOS is actually going to address the truly disgusting level of power that ballgroups have right now, I'd argue that in fact, Azureblight should be buffed.

ForumSavant · August 5

I made a post on this a while back, the real problem with Azureblight is that it's so strong it can be used in EVERY type of content. It is top tier in PvE trials, BGs, Cyro, and every other scenario. It also creates an insane amount of lag because of the calculations it has to do. The set is just bad for the game.

Urzigurumash · August 5

Set needs a buff. I used to win duels with it in like 3 seconds using Necrotic Orb

Tcholl · August 5

The lag issue with azureblight is real.

SkaraMinoc · August 5

Arcanist Fatecarver should not generate 3 Azureblight stacks per second.

xylena_lazarow · August 5

ForumSavant wrote: »

I made a post on this a while back, the real problem with Azureblight is that it's so strong it can be used in EVERY type of content. It is top tier in PvE trials, BGs, Cyro, and every other scenario. It also creates an insane amount of lag because of the calculations it has to do. The set is just bad for the game.

From my experience, it's pretty useless in smaller fights or against random spread out zergs. You're sacrificing a lot of utility to go all in on Azure and blow up stacked groups, not just sets but bars. The tradeoff is appropriate.

acastanza_ESO · August 5

Tcholl wrote: »

The lag issue with azureblight is real.

The lag issue with ballgroups is real. Azureblight is the only real counter to ballgroups.
Fix ballgroups, only then adjust Azureblight, in that order. Anything else is game destroying.

WarGnome · August 5

SkaraMinoc wrote: »

Arcanist Fatecarver should not generate 3 Azureblight stacks per second.

You leave me and my azurebeam alone! lol yeah it creates a lot of stacks which I can see being frustrating. But beam also slows you down , so it’s a bit difficult to work with in a running fight.

ForumSavant · August 5

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

ForumSavant wrote: »

I made a post on this a while back, the real problem with Azureblight is that it's so strong it can be used in EVERY type of content. It is top tier in PvE trials, BGs, Cyro, and every other scenario. It also creates an insane amount of lag because of the calculations it has to do. The set is just bad for the game.

From my experience, it's pretty useless in smaller fights or against random spread out zergs. You're sacrificing a lot of utility to go all in on Azure and blow up stacked groups, not just sets but bars. The tradeoff is appropriate.

Just untrue. Even in smaller fights Azure is still worth it, look at any trial or 4 man logs that are always at the top of the charts, azure is still there. The "tradeoff" is that you gain more damage unless it's literally 3 people/mobs.

Photosniper89 · August 5

acastanza_ESO wrote: »

Tcholl wrote: »

The lag issue with azureblight is real.

The lag issue with ballgroups is real. Azureblight is the only real counter to ballgroups.
Fix ballgroups, only then adjust Azureblight, in that order. Anything else is game destroying.

You can't "fix" ball groups. All you people complain about the heal stacking and even if they removed that ball groups will still be a thing. The thing that makes "ball groups" so good is their attention to detail. The sets, the comps, the positioning, the DMG output falling within 1-2 seconds on a very specific dmg point, solos or pugs aren't going to be able to counter it.

Honestly, if they take heal stacking away you all would be worse off (think about all the heals from randos you have on you that you have no idea about).

As for Azure blight, the lag it causes is insane and causes a lot of people to crash. Turn you shadows off first of all and that significantly reduces the lag around azure blight.

divnyi · August 5

Photosniper89 wrote: »

acastanza_ESO wrote: »

Tcholl wrote: »

The lag issue with azureblight is real.

The lag issue with ballgroups is real. Azureblight is the only real counter to ballgroups.
Fix ballgroups, only then adjust Azureblight, in that order. Anything else is game destroying.

You can't "fix" ball groups. All you people complain about the heal stacking and even if they removed that ball groups will still be a thing. The thing that makes "ball groups" so good is their attention to detail. The sets, the comps, the positioning, the DMG output falling within 1-2 seconds on a very specific dmg point, solos or pugs aren't going to be able to counter it.

Honestly, if they take heal stacking away you all would be worse off (think about all the heals from randos you have on you that you have no idea about).

It shows that you don't know how much passive HoTs pugs stack. No, it's not nearly the same amount as balls do.
HoT stacks, shield stacks, AoE movement speed buffs & snow threader is what is keeping you alive.
Take that away, and you can start to brag about attention to detail if you still succeed.

Joy_Division · August 6

Photosniper89 wrote: »

acastanza_ESO wrote: »

Tcholl wrote: »

The lag issue with azureblight is real.

The lag issue with ballgroups is real. Azureblight is the only real counter to ballgroups.
Fix ballgroups, only then adjust Azureblight, in that order. Anything else is game destroying.

Honestly, if they take heal stacking away you all would be worse off (think about all the heals from randos you have on you that you have no idea about).

Yeah, the one random radiating regen I got from a random pug totally puts me at an advantage against the 12 Vigor HoTs and the shield stacking the entire organized group gets from specific builds.

Thanks ZOS.