Questionable Plaguebreak comment in patch notes

SkaraMinoc · October 15

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/comment/8192605/#Comment_8192605

Rather than try and find a balance between PvE and PvP for this set, and ultimately compromise so it doesn't feel particularly strong in either, we're removing the damage scaling effects against players – as Plaguebreak already fits the bill of the PvP big boom set.

No it doesn't. Coordinated groups don't cleanse which means Plaguebreak doesn't proc. Even if it did, groups can heal through it. The proc would need to be 40k+ damage to even make a dent now that Scribing has super buffed groups.

[Minor title edit]

necro_the_crafter · October 15

https://youtu.be/jngnhqLAMmA

Im wearing plaguebreak by the way.
Oh wait...

SkaraMinoc · October 15

I'm guessing your reply was sarcasm because you didn't get a single Plaguebreak proc. ("Plague Infected")

SkaraMinoc · October 15

Does anyone know if the Plaguebreak damage bonus per enemy hit is additive or exponential?

https://esoitem.uesp.net/viewSkillCoef.php?abilityid=159603

If the plague is removed early it explodes and deals <<5>> to all enemies within 8 meters of the carrier, increasing by <<6>> per enemy hit.

<<5>> = + 0.73588 MaxPower
<<6>> = 50%

4 enemies additive = 1 + 0.5 + 0.5 + 0.5
4 enemies exponential = 1 * 1.5^3

Because there's a huge scaling difference.

Here's a quick visual using some standard combat numbers (6k wd/sd, 18k pen, 35k resist, Minor Protection, etc)

Artim_X · October 15

The OP is right. Plaguebreak is not fulfilling it's role, since organized groups can just out heal the need to purge.

Heal stacking needs to be addressed for the overall health of Cyrodiil/IC maybe through battle spirit so PvE isn't affected.

YandereGirlfriend · October 15

Yeah, there's an order of processing done by the server and OO and VD are processed before PB on an "on death" event. This has been known since ancient ages.

Had your OO and VD not already wiped that group then you would have seen the PB damage.

Necrotech_Master · October 15

my understanding is basically every scaled proc is basically additive of the base value

so if it says increases dmg by 100% per target, and the base dmg is 1000

i noticed this with baron thirsk set which increases dmg by 100% per explosion, but its actual dmg per explosion didnt double on each explosion, it only increased by the amount of the initial explosion

the initial explosion was say 800, the 2nd hit was 1600 and the 3rd hit was 2400

plague is +50% dmg per target

using your initial number of 1146 (rounded to make math easier), each subsequent target would increase the dmg by 1146/2 or 573 dmg

i dont know if 1 target adds the bonus 1x still, so your minimum dmg would still be 1146+573

for each additional target you would just add 573 more dmg

essentially hitting 10 targets would add 5730 dmg on top of the base 1146 or 6876 total dmg

SkaraMinoc · October 15

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

my understanding is basically every scaled proc is basically additive of the base value

so if it says increases dmg by 100% per target, and the base dmg is 1000

i noticed this with baron thirsk set which increases dmg by 100% per explosion, but its actual dmg per explosion didnt double on each explosion, it only increased by the amount of the initial explosion

the initial explosion was say 800, the 2nd hit was 1600 and the 3rd hit was 2400

plague is +50% dmg per target

using your initial number of 1146 (rounded to make math easier), each subsequent target would increase the dmg by 1146/2 or 573 dmg

i dont know if 1 target adds the bonus 1x still, so your minimum dmg would still be 1146+573

for each additional target you would just add 573 more dmg

essentially hitting 10 targets would add 5730 dmg on top of the base 1146 or 6876 total dmg

If that's the case, then Plaguebreak absolutely does not "fit the bill of a big PvP boom set" as mentioned in the patch notes.

Here's an example calculation (6k wd, 18k pen, etc)

12 enemies: ((6000 * 0.73588) * 1.5*11) * 0.5 * (1-((35000-18000)/660)/100) * (1-(20/100)) * (1-(5/100)) * (1-(8/100)) = 18908.87813

18.9k damage is nothing against a coordinated group

Necrotech_Master · October 15

SkaraMinoc wrote: »

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

my understanding is basically every scaled proc is basically additive of the base value

so if it says increases dmg by 100% per target, and the base dmg is 1000

i noticed this with baron thirsk set which increases dmg by 100% per explosion, but its actual dmg per explosion didnt double on each explosion, it only increased by the amount of the initial explosion

the initial explosion was say 800, the 2nd hit was 1600 and the 3rd hit was 2400

plague is +50% dmg per target

using your initial number of 1146 (rounded to make math easier), each subsequent target would increase the dmg by 1146/2 or 573 dmg

i dont know if 1 target adds the bonus 1x still, so your minimum dmg would still be 1146+573

for each additional target you would just add 573 more dmg

essentially hitting 10 targets would add 5730 dmg on top of the base 1146 or 6876 total dmg

If that's the case, then Plaguebreak absolutely does not "fit the bill of a big PvP boom set" as mentioned in the patch notes.

Here's an example calculation using the same as my previous math above (6k wd, 18k pen, etc)

12 enemies: ((6000 * 0.73588) * 1.5*11) * 0.5 * (1-((35000-18000)/660)/100) * (1-(20/100)) * (1-(5/100)) * (1-(8/100)) = 18908.87813

18.9k damage is nothing against a coordinated group

most of the plague hits i usually see right now are in the 6-12k range, since the proc scales it cannot crit, and the base dmg and scaling are too low to make it really do big booms (if your solo it does negligible dmg)

does it contribute to help bomb? sure it can bit it solely wont be able to do that, VD itself usually does more dmg than plague

SkaraMinoc · October 15

@ZOS_Kevin Any idea why the Developer Comment in the patch notes is incorrect?

Rather than try and find a balance between PvE and PvP for this set, and ultimately compromise so it doesn't feel particularly strong in either, we're removing the damage scaling effects against players – as Plaguebreak already fits the bill of the PvP big boom set.

The math shows that Plaguebreak is not a PvP big boom set. Especially when coordinated groups are able to avoid the proc.

Aldoss · October 15

Hey @ZOS_BrianWheeler, care to chime in here and explain how you see this set working against ball groups that have 80-100k effective hp?

Otherwise, it just seems like you don't care, or that some combat team members actively play in a ball group and made a decision in their best interest and not the interests of the greater Cyro playerbase.

YandereGirlfriend · October 15

SkaraMinoc wrote: »

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

my understanding is basically every scaled proc is basically additive of the base value

so if it says increases dmg by 100% per target, and the base dmg is 1000

i noticed this with baron thirsk set which increases dmg by 100% per explosion, but its actual dmg per explosion didnt double on each explosion, it only increased by the amount of the initial explosion

the initial explosion was say 800, the 2nd hit was 1600 and the 3rd hit was 2400

plague is +50% dmg per target

using your initial number of 1146 (rounded to make math easier), each subsequent target would increase the dmg by 1146/2 or 573 dmg

i dont know if 1 target adds the bonus 1x still, so your minimum dmg would still be 1146+573

for each additional target you would just add 573 more dmg

essentially hitting 10 targets would add 5730 dmg on top of the base 1146 or 6876 total dmg

If that's the case, then Plaguebreak absolutely does not "fit the bill of a big PvP boom set" as mentioned in the patch notes.

Here's an example calculation using the same as my previous math above (6k wd, 18k pen, etc)

12 enemies: ((6000 * 0.73588) * 1.5*11) * 0.5 * (1-((35000-18000)/660)/100) * (1-(20/100)) * (1-(5/100)) * (1-(8/100)) = 18908.87813

18.9k damage is nothing against a coordinated group

It's a damage cascade set like VD.

If only a single person purges (like, say, by a Netch removing its single effect) when nothing else is happening then the PB damage isn't going to move the needle.

OTOH, if that group is holding a ram and is under oils, Coldfire, etc. or is getting zerged and under a Negate and that person purges then that damage could be just the damage spike that's needed to start the chain of wipes and the PB damage cascade.

SkaraMinoc · October 15

YandereGirlfriend wrote: »

OTOH, if that group is holding a ram and is under oils, Coldfire, etc. or is getting zerged and under a Negate and that person purges then that damage could be just the damage spike that's needed to start the chain of wipes and the PB damage cascade.

Except no coordinated group of 12 players does that. Maybe you'll have 6 players on a ram but the rest spread out and fire a ballista. Yes, I get what you're saying about how Plaguebreak can be just enough AOE damage to start a chain reaction. But let's be honest, the conditions for that to happen are extremely rare.

8m radius is not that large and the base damage of Plaguebreak and the additive scaling isn't enough.

Joy_Division · October 15

The OP is correct and i explicitly pointed this out immediately upon reading week 2's azureblight developer note

necro_the_crafter · October 16

SkaraMinoc wrote: »

I'm guessing your reply was sarcasm because you didn't get a single Plaguebreak proc. ("Plague Infected")

Indeed thats a sarcasm

YandereGirlfriend wrote: »

It's a damage cascade set like VD.

If only a single person purges (like, say, by a Netch removing its single effect) when nothing else is happening then the PB damage isn't going to move the needle.

OTOH, if that group is holding a ram and is under oils, Coldfire, etc. or is getting zerged and under a Negate and that person purges then that damage could be just the damage spike that's needed to start the chain of wipes and the PB damage cascade.

No it isnt, VD is a cascade set like VD.

As you saw PB didnt proc at all during all of the encounter. And I got a lot of players infected in that group based off numbers of PB DoT ticks. Which is means that its just to easy to heal throght PB DPS without triggering it. And if you want to wipe the group full-to-zero with a bomb you better of picking VD OR PB since:

YandereGirlfriend wrote: »

Yeah, there's an order of processing done by the server and OO and VD are processed before PB on an "on death" event. This has been known since ancient ages.

Had your OO and VD not already wiped that group then you would have seen the PB damage.

But since PB can only be applied to 1 target at a time while VD will explode everyone who dies, VD is a better option for full-to-zero kills that sets off a big bomb.

Which in the end means that PB isnt an alternative to AB, nor it is an alternaative to VD. They all different, and serve their different purposes. PB - cleanses, AB - stacking, VD - lack of attention/poor target priority. And effectivly removing AB is just removing one of a counters to a effective combat behaviour.

YandereGirlfriend wrote: »

Yeah, there's an order of processing done by the server and OO and VD are processed before PB on an "on death" event. This has been known since ancient ages.

Had your OO and VD not already wiped that group then you would have seen the PB damage.

Necrotech_Master · October 16

necro_the_crafter wrote: »

SkaraMinoc wrote: »

I'm guessing your reply was sarcasm because you didn't get a single Plaguebreak proc. ("Plague Infected")

Indeed thats a sarcasm

YandereGirlfriend wrote: »

It's a damage cascade set like VD.

If only a single person purges (like, say, by a Netch removing its single effect) when nothing else is happening then the PB damage isn't going to move the needle.

OTOH, if that group is holding a ram and is under oils, Coldfire, etc. or is getting zerged and under a Negate and that person purges then that damage could be just the damage spike that's needed to start the chain of wipes and the PB damage cascade.

No it isnt, VD is a cascade set like VD.

As you saw PB didnt proc at all during all of the encounter. And I got a lot of players infected in that group based off numbers of PB DoT ticks. Which is means that its just to easy to heal throght PB DPS without triggering it. And if you want to wipe the group full-to-zero with a bomb you better of picking VD OR PB since:

YandereGirlfriend wrote: »

Yeah, there's an order of processing done by the server and OO and VD are processed before PB on an "on death" event. This has been known since ancient ages.

Had your OO and VD not already wiped that group then you would have seen the PB damage.

But since PB can only be applied to 1 target at a time while VD will explode everyone who dies, VD is a better option for full-to-zero kills that sets off a big bomb.

Which in the end means that PB isnt an alternative to AB, nor it is an alternaative to VD. They all different, and serve their different purposes. PB - cleanses, AB - stacking, VD - lack of attention/poor target priority. And effectivly removing AB is just removing one of a counters to a effective combat behaviour.

YandereGirlfriend wrote: »

Yeah, there's an order of processing done by the server and OO and VD are processed before PB on an "on death" event. This has been known since ancient ages.

Had your OO and VD not already wiped that group then you would have seen the PB damage.

the PB dot itself is kind of intentionally weak, even the added dot from the guaranteed diseased dmg and minor defile doesnt really do much

what PB is supposed to do is penalize purging, but as been noted if your in a small group or solo, the explosion does negligible dmg when you purge, when your in a large group, you have so many heal and shield stacks theres almost no need to purge

at least they made it so that when people die the explosion still happens, when the set originally came out the enemy had to purge to make it explode (and i think the explosion was much stronger then too)

warm_blanket · October 17

Plaguebreak has 3 problems which hold it back against groups:

The base damage & scaling are too low for a "big boom" bombing set, as already mentioned.
The uptime on the set is only 50%, making it trivial to deny the bomb proc even if it were a "big boom".
The amount of damage mitigation groups of players can stack is insane.

Addressing even just one of the above 3 would help make it more useful against stacks of players. Atm the only "big boom" set is vicious death.

Though outside of finally addressing the long standing issue with the mitigation ceiling of grouped players, if I had to pick I would prefer to see the 50% uptime per target of PB increased significantly (80%+) as opposed to increasing its base damage, as it would solidify its niche as an anti-purge set while also making the booms much likely to proc due to the plague debuff lasting longer. Not to mention granting a higher uptime on diseased.

ForumSavant · October 17

This isn't completely true. People have misconceptions about the way plaguebreak works. It 100% prevents big groups from using purge if there are multiple people under the effect of it. If one person has plague on them, while standing in a group of 12, it will deal large AoE damage, but the group won't die. If multiple people have plague on them(which they should if the person is applying it properly) and the group gets purged, the damage will be much higher.

The above comment is correct about the orders of sets, and plague usually won't show, but most bigger groups don't run purge, or if they do, like LoM, they will only use it while under oil while nobody is applying plague to them. I have seen one single person applying plague while they are under oil and were unaware and blow up multiple people while attempting to purge. I've been in a group of 5 and someone has purged and instantly killed everyone from full HP because they all had plague on them so the damage was multiplicative. If you don't understand the way it works just get a few friends to sit together and have one of them get plague on them and have them purge, then get the same number of people and have more of them get plague applied and you will see that it very quickly becomes impossible to do so.

Necrotech_Master · October 17

warm_blanket wrote: »

Plaguebreak has 3 problems which hold it back against groups:
The base damage & scaling are too low for a "big boom" bombing set, as already mentioned.

The uptime on the set is only 50%, making it trivial to deny the bomb proc even if it were a "big boom".

The amount of damage mitigation groups of players can stack is insane.

Addressing even just one of the above 3 would help make it more useful against stacks of players. Atm the only "big boom" set is vicious death.

Though outside of finally addressing the long standing issue with the mitigation ceiling of grouped players, if I had to pick I would prefer to see the 50% uptime per target of PB increased significantly (80%+) as opposed to increasing its base damage, as it would solidify its niche as an anti-purge set while also making the booms much likely to proc due to the plague debuff lasting longer. Not to mention granting a higher uptime on diseased.

the uptime can actually be high or low, depending on if the target purges

i the dot lasts for the entire duration, the max uptime is 50% (10 sec dot, 20 sec cooldown)

if someone purges right after they get it such as if they were away from allies, the downtime could be larger, if they purged 1 second after it was applied, it would be down for 19 seconds instead of 10

if i recall, this set used to basically have no cooldown at all, so you could keep the plague dot up near 100% of the time

CrazyKitty · October 17

SkaraMinoc wrote: »

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/comment/8192605/#Comment_8192605

Rather than try and find a balance between PvE and PvP for this set, and ultimately compromise so it doesn't feel particularly strong in either, we're removing the damage scaling effects against players – as Plaguebreak already fits the bill of the PvP big boom set.

No it doesn't. Coordinated groups don't cleanse which means Plaguebreak doesn't proc. Even if it did, groups can heal through it. The proc would need to be 40k+ damage to even make a dent now that Scribing has super buffed groups.

[Minor title edit]

Statements like this and their explanation for what they did to Azurblight make it clear nobody at ZOS knows what's going on in Cyrodiil or how to make balance adjustments that benefit PvP.

warm_blanket · October 18

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

the uptime can actually be high or low, depending on if the target purges

i the dot lasts for the entire duration, the max uptime is 50% (10 sec dot, 20 sec cooldown)

if someone purges right after they get it such as if they were away from allies, the downtime could be larger, if they purged 1 second after it was applied, it would be down for 19 seconds instead of 10

if i recall, this set used to basically have no cooldown at all, so you could keep the plague dot up near 100% of the time

Yes this is also part of what I was getting at. Thanks for explaining it explicitly.

A bit silly that the anti-purge effect actually has a lower uptime when a player purges, down from 50% to as low as 5%. Pretty funny how counterproductive/counterintuitive that is.