Ballgroups

Friendly-assasin81

Why is there still ballgroups in cyrodiil?
Ruins the whole campaign. Its stupid to have people run around doing nothing for the caimpaign objective and are unkillable...
They almost look like they are cheating(some of them might be)....

MoonlightShadow

Since subclassing ballgroups and comp group (mini-ballgroups) have gotten worse. They can pull from multiple classes and not need as many players. The other night I saw a group of four wardens (know that was their base class because of the endless warden charms). Three of them were using the Templar Restoring Light (rune focus and remembrance) tree accompanied by the Warden Animal Companion (netch and beetles) and Warden Winter's Embrace (Polar Wind). These three were also using Dawnbreaker. The fourth was running the Necro Grave Lord instead of Templar skills combined with dark convergence, vicious death and Colossus. All of them were also moving at movement speed cap.

These four had about 20 people chasing them around a tower and cold fire siege hitting them often. They were moving so fast that about 40%+ of your attacks never went off because they were already out of line of sight. Hitting them with multiple cold fire ballista did nothing because of all their cleanses and purges. They were a small enough group that plaguebreak was ineffective. Any Damage Over Time skill was mitigated (again because of all the cleanses). They all had 40K+ Health so their Polar Wind kept their health topped up (all 4 are running it which heals you and a friend scaling on your health and it appears to stack). Then as they are running around they are just spamming their beetles, warden charm, polar wind. Then when they are ready to burst they stop and let people catch up to them. Drop Colossus with Dark Convergence pulling every one and and then Dawnbreaker everyone pulled in. Because you have 20+ people trying to kill 4, someone in the mess is guaranteed to have low health and will pop and off goes vicious death.

So what to do about them????? I have said many times in zone chat and a few times here. The best counter to ballgroups is to just leave and not give them the fight. Instead of having 20+ people tied up chasing four around a resource tower. Just leave them in the tower and go somewhere else. I know our group has been called cowards at times because if ballgroups show up, we will either avoid the ballgroup and capture the objective anyway, or we will just leave and choose another target. When multiple ballgroups show up somewhere to feed, we leave or shoot siege on them until they get board.

Best way to counter them is not give them what they want. They want kills and to feel powerful. Let them PVDoor instead. They want attention with people chasing them around towers. Let them have the resource. We can always come back to take it later. How long do you think ballgroups will last if they become PVDoor groups?? Learn to pick your fights, and when to walk away. Yeah it means losing an objective, but while the ballgroup is PVDoor go hit somewhere else.

Or better yet troll them. Practice the principles of asymmetric warfare because that is what it is. You have an overwhelmingly powerful force (multiple ballgroups) and the best tactic is not to try to hit them head on. Instead, change the terms of the fight. There have been times I took a 6 person strike team. Lit up keeps that the ballgroups would want to defend (ones with scrolls, or home keeps), and then moved on and lit up another. And cut their transit along the way. We have had three full ballgroups chasing us around the map at times. Make them run all that way for no fight. The rest of the faction is sometimes able to take advantage of our distraction and take back our home keeps.

The other counter is to make your own ballgroup. ZOS obviously not only encourages ballgroup play, it seems they actively boost them (Rush of Agony, warden charm, proxy det, ulti dump anyone?). They have made little effort to provide a counter over the last several years. And when people found a counter (Azureblight) ZOS nurfed it into the ground to protect the ballgroups. Snake in the Stars worked pretty well too, until they increased the cooldown to make it worthless. Basically casual PVP is dying in this game until they start paying attention to the average players rather than the elites and provide some form of counter. Just a couple years ago, Greyhost and Blackreach were both pop locked every weekend. Now all the campaigns are dead except Greyhost. The reason can be directly linked to how ZOS has handled PVP. There has been a significant decrease in casual PVP since subclassing, but the problems existed long before then. Every time casual players find a counter to ballgroups and comp groups (as they like to be called), ZOS has nurfed it as too powerful. Even Cold Fire Ballistas are useless now. Groups either cleanse it off, or easily out heal the damage.

So the answer for now is join a ballgroup, or stop feeding the ballgroups and farm some ap.

Theignson

If you took away Proc of Agony, Invidious death and warden charm most of these ball groups couldn’t kill a fly.

This was proven by Vengeance: ball groups (mostly) refused to play because they died just like pugs. They did not show any superior skills. This means they were relying on proc sets to replace abilities.(plus mass group heals prodding absurdly high HPS)

If you watch ball groups in Zerodil you see every 8 seconds a huge 24m diameter Proc of Agony. All night long. these sets replace the need to actually use skills to lock down players.

How it works: everyone knows that the huge number of heals/ shields/ abilities they cast drastically hurts performance. My FPS can drop to 10 around ball groups. In that jumbled mess, you can get pulled absurdly far from PoA (yes it is still broken) due to Desync. You think you are 20m past the pull circle, but no. Then in the jumbled visual mess and stuttering sound of 10 fps, it is impossible to see you are charmed until “too late” !. Then the conveniently gathered players who are cc,ed (because Crutch of Agony does not induce cc immunity) get pounded by northern storm plus colossus.

The only people defending these sets are the actually large numbers of people using them. ZOS has ignored the thousands of posts about them.

Small groups who have 45k hp plus immortality due to stacked heals plus stacked shields plus 200 run speed at all times would still be impossible to kill without these sets and skills but that is a separate (but related) problem

Mathius_Mordred

The simple short answer has already been mentioned. If we are taking a keep and are attacked by a ball group, we leave and go to another keep or resource. If nobody fights them, then they only have PVDooring left to do. It's obvious that ZOS wants ball groups, and most of us don't; one of the beauties of the Vengeance campaign is that it doesn't have ball groups.

So, ignore them, go somewhere else, then return when they've gone, end of story.

SneaK

MoonlightShadow wrote: »

Since subclassing ballgroups and comp group (mini-ballgroups) have gotten worse. They can pull from multiple classes and not need as many players. The other night I saw a group of four wardens (know that was their base class because of the endless warden charms). Three of them were using the Templar Restoring Light (rune focus and remembrance) tree accompanied by the Warden Animal Companion (netch and beetles) and Warden Winter's Embrace (Polar Wind). These three were also using Dawnbreaker. The fourth was running the Necro Grave Lord instead of Templar skills combined with dark convergence, vicious death and Colossus. All of them were also moving at movement speed cap.

These four had about 20 people chasing them around a tower and cold fire siege hitting them often. They were moving so fast that about 40%+ of your attacks never went off because they were already out of line of sight. Hitting them with multiple cold fire ballista did nothing because of all their cleanses and purges. They were a small enough group that plaguebreak was ineffective. Any Damage Over Time skill was mitigated (again because of all the cleanses). They all had 40K+ Health so their Polar Wind kept their health topped up (all 4 are running it which heals you and a friend scaling on your health and it appears to stack). Then as they are running around they are just spamming their beetles, warden charm, polar wind. Then when they are ready to burst they stop and let people catch up to them. Drop Colossus with Dark Convergence pulling every one and and then Dawnbreaker everyone pulled in. Because you have 20+ people trying to kill 4, someone in the mess is guaranteed to have low health and will pop and off goes vicious death.

So what to do about them????? I have said many times in zone chat and a few times here. The best counter to ballgroups is to just leave and not give them the fight. Instead of having 20+ people tied up chasing four around a resource tower. Just leave them in the tower and go somewhere else. I know our group has been called cowards at times because if ballgroups show up, we will either avoid the ballgroup and capture the objective anyway, or we will just leave and choose another target. When multiple ballgroups show up somewhere to feed, we leave or shoot siege on them until they get board.

Best way to counter them is not give them what they want. They want kills and to feel powerful. Let them PVDoor instead. They want attention with people chasing them around towers. Let them have the resource. We can always come back to take it later. How long do you think ballgroups will last if they become PVDoor groups?? Learn to pick your fights, and when to walk away. Yeah it means losing an objective, but while the ballgroup is PVDoor go hit somewhere else.

Or better yet troll them. Practice the principles of asymmetric warfare because that is what it is. You have an overwhelmingly powerful force (multiple ballgroups) and the best tactic is not to try to hit them head on. Instead, change the terms of the fight. There have been times I took a 6 person strike team. Lit up keeps that the ballgroups would want to defend (ones with scrolls, or home keeps), and then moved on and lit up another. And cut their transit along the way. We have had three full ballgroups chasing us around the map at times. Make them run all that way for no fight. The rest of the faction is sometimes able to take advantage of our distraction and take back our home keeps.

The other counter is to make your own ballgroup. ZOS obviously not only encourages ballgroup play, it seems they actively boost them (Rush of Agony, warden charm, proxy det, ulti dump anyone?). They have made little effort to provide a counter over the last several years. And when people found a counter (Azureblight) ZOS nurfed it into the ground to protect the ballgroups. Snake in the Stars worked pretty well too, until they increased the cooldown to make it worthless. Basically casual PVP is dying in this game until they start paying attention to the average players rather than the elites and provide some form of counter. Just a couple years ago, Greyhost and Blackreach were both pop locked every weekend. Now all the campaigns are dead except Greyhost. The reason can be directly linked to how ZOS has handled PVP. There has been a significant decrease in casual PVP since subclassing, but the problems existed long before then. Every time casual players find a counter to ballgroups and comp groups (as they like to be called), ZOS has nurfed it as too powerful. Even Cold Fire Ballistas are useless now. Groups either cleanse it off, or easily out heal the damage.

So the answer for now is join a ballgroup, or stop feeding the ballgroups and farm some ap.

So, those 4 players are perceived as doing something wrong because they are playing the way the want… no accusations, but people bring up problems all the time where the catalyst is subclassing and they don’t even know it.

BardokRedSnow

Theignson wrote: »

If you took away Proc of Agony, Invidious death and warden charm most of these ball groups couldn’t kill a fly.

This was proven by Vengeance: ball groups (mostly) refused to play because they died just like pugs. They did not show any superior skills. This means they were relying on proc sets to replace abilities.(plus mass group heals prodding absurdly high HPS)

If you watch ball groups in Zerodil you see every 8 seconds a huge 24m diameter Proc of Agony. All night long. these sets replace the need to actually use skills to lock down players.

How it works: everyone knows that the huge number of heals/ shields/ abilities they cast drastically hurts performance. My FPS can drop to 10 around ball groups. In that jumbled mess, you can get pulled absurdly far from PoA (yes it is still broken) due to Desync. You think you are 20m past the pull circle, but no. Then in the jumbled visual mess and stuttering sound of 10 fps, it is impossible to see you are charmed until “too late” !. Then the conveniently gathered players who are cc,ed (because Crutch of Agony does not induce cc immunity) get pounded by northern storm plus colossus.

The only people defending these sets are the actually large numbers of people using them. ZOS has ignored the thousands of posts about them.

Small groups who have 45k hp plus immortality due to stacked heals plus stacked shields plus 200 run speed at all times would still be impossible to kill without these sets and skills but that is a separate (but related) problem

Not wanting to participate in Vengeance isn't a ballgroup exclusive thing, lol Vengeance is a zerg fest, not skill based. Whoever has the biggest zerg will win in the button mash fest, that is boring. And not at all what an mmo rpg is supposed to play like.

That said, you're right in spirit. Either you play in a ball because youre afraid of dying alone or you play in a ball to counter other balls.... either way it's boring for anyone else.

All Zos needs to do is kill heal stacking and cross healing. Weaken healing in general, it is obnoxious. People would still be able to play with procs and there would be much less immortal groups and tanks to worry about, though not entirely.

Ball groups weren't as bad when we had sets that could kill them but they're all nerfed now. So nerfing heal stacking and cross healing is the answer.

Vulkunne

Friendly-assasin81 wrote: »

Why is there still ballgroups in cyrodiil?
Ruins the whole campaign. Its stupid to have people run around doing nothing for the caimpaign objective and are unkillable...
They almost look like they are cheating(some of them might be)....

Exactly. Its like... if they was cheating... how would you know?

Katahdin

Yup I used to play in Cyro quite a bit. I have one character maxed out to the alliance rank to Grand overlord.
I dont any more and one of the reasons is I got sick of chasing ball groups around keeps for an hour.
Its so boring

aetherix8

Curious how any coordinated group is a ballgroup nowadays, even a 4-man small scale tower trolls.
Cyrodiil is designed for large scale battles and group play. Sure, power creep has turned any coordinated group into a nearly unkillable force, and shrinking population makes these groups even stronger as there aren’t enough zergs to pressure them, but other than that there is nothing wrong with group play and using in-game resources in the most effective way.
Until ZOS fixes heal / shield stacking, and starts to balance sets separately for PvP, there isn’t much to do against ballgroups other than going somewhere else. Just don’t chase 4 trolls into a resource tower.

xR3ACTORx

Mathius_Mordred wrote: »

The simple short answer has already been mentioned. If we are taking a keep and are attacked by a ball group, we leave and go to another keep or resource. If nobody fights them, then they only have PVDooring left to do. It's obvious that ZOS wants ball groups, and most of us don't; one of the beauties of the Vengeance campaign is that it doesn't have ball groups.

So, ignore them, go somewhere else, then return when they've gone, end of story.

Vengeance drove many players away. How can this be any good?

MISTFORMBZZZ

We all know ball groups will be never gone, unless they kill pvp for everyone with vengeance. And thats fine. Play the game in the way how you want, doesnt only appear for role players.

frogthroat

In nature the most OP tactic is teaming. A tiger can beat a lion, but not a pride. A pride will kick a tiger's behind. An ant will lose to a toad. But a million ants consider a toad an easy snack.

We are a naturally cooperative species. That's how even as cavemen we took down mammoths. One guy with a spear stands no chance against a mammoth, but 6 men with practiced tactics will have more food they can carry.

So it is only natural that in any competitive activity, the group that cooperates well together will have advantage. And we want advantage.

I don't play in a ball and probably never will, but I fully understand why they exist. Unless the game explicitly forbids teaming, organised groups will emerge. That's just how our species work.

Major_Mangle

To anyone claiming Vengeance fixed ballgroups.....

Only reason you didn't see ballgroup to the same extent was due to the limited offensive AoE caps which completely nukes any reliable potential to fight larger stacks of players. Majority of those who played vengeance will agree that having such small offensive AoE caps is just poor design since it rewards zerging way too much.
Remove that AoE cap and you'll see ballgroups in Vengeance as well.

Mathius_Mordred

Major_Mangle wrote: »

To anyone claiming Vengeance fixed ballgroups.....

Only reason you didn't see ballgroup to the same extent was due to the limited offensive AoE caps which completely nukes any reliable potential to fight larger stacks of players. Majority of those who played vengeance will agree that having such small offensive AoE caps is just poor design since it rewards zerging way too much.
Remove that AoE cap and you'll see ballgroups in Vengeance as well.

I was pretty sure it's because Vengeance negates ALL set bonuses, so nobody is buffing each other.

Muizer

Just beware that ZOS being ZOS, ballgroups could easily come back in future iterations of Vengeance. If they bring in healing and destruction AOEs centered on the player (no minimum range) all the awful gameplay will come back there as well.

Four_Fingers

Our "ball" group stayed out of vengeance in protest, not that we couldn't play zerg like everyone else.
If vengeance becomes permanent, we will adapt and people will still complain.

Friendly-assasin81

When i say ballgroup, i mean a group of people that is unkillable and that doesnt play the objective in cyrodiil.
The objective is clearly to win the campaign by taking keeps and scrolls. Ballgroups never take keeps only farms players in them. Ballgroups takes scrolls and farm players with it until the scroll spawns back in the keep it was in...
Ravenwatch was okay before the procsets but is just ballgroup and mostly dead now.
I only play in Greyhost now and my group takes keeps and scrolls but just moves away(if we are fast enough) when there are towertrolls and ballgroups.
But it is still annoying when you take a keep and then have a ballgroup running in that you have to run away from because they are un killable...
I have tried Spellshredder and oakfather against them too. Does nothing.
Dont let cyrodiil die because of a few groups with small *******!

Four_Fingers

Friendly-assasin81 wrote: »

When i say ballgroup, i mean a group of people that is unkillable and that doesnt play the objective in cyrodiil.
The objective is clearly to win the campaign by taking keeps and scrolls. Ballgroups never take keeps only farms players in them. Ballgroups takes scrolls and farm players with it until the scroll spawns back in the keep it was in...
Ravenwatch was okay before the procsets but is just ballgroup and mostly dead now.
I only play in Greyhost now and my group takes keeps and scrolls but just moves away(if we are fast enough) when there are towertrolls and ballgroups.
But it is still annoying when you take a keep and then have a ballgroup running in that you have to run away from because they are un killable...
I have tried Spellshredder and oakfather against them too. Does nothing.
Dont let cyrodiil die because of a few groups with small *******!

Not true at all we always go after emp for someone in our group and usually the only ones taking the ring keeps.
Most non ball groups practice PvP in zone chat. lol
Not to mention the objective in PvP is to kill players not doors.

Orbital78

Katahdin wrote: »

Yup I used to play in Cyro quite a bit. I have one character maxed out to the alliance rank to Grand overlord.
I dont any more and one of the reasons is I got sick of chasing ball groups around keeps for an hour.
Its so boring

You're supposed to just ignore them so they get bored and move on, if you don't have good enough numbers. The same with tower jumpers, let them hide or someone else play ring around the rosie.

aetherix8

Friendly-assasin81 wrote: »

When i say ballgroup, i mean a group of people that is unkillable and that doesnt play the objective in cyrodiil.
The objective is clearly to win the campaign by taking keeps and scrolls. Ballgroups never take keeps only farms players in them. Ballgroups takes scrolls and farm players with it until the scroll spawns back in the keep it was in...
Ravenwatch was okay before the procsets but is just ballgroup and mostly dead now.
I only play in Greyhost now and my group takes keeps and scrolls but just moves away(if we are fast enough) when there are towertrolls and ballgroups.
But it is still annoying when you take a keep and then have a ballgroup running in that you have to run away from because they are un killable...
I have tried Spellshredder and oakfather against them too. Does nothing.
Dont let cyrodiil die because of a few groups with small *******!

Some players consider taking objectives to be mostly PvDoor, and farming other players to be a proper PvP.
Veteran players are bored after years of playing campaigns that are mostly won by the faction with most insomniacs.
Farming players in resource towers while outnumbered is for some players more exciting than going door to door.

MJallday

are ballgroups in PvP an issue ? yes undoubtably.
does the PvP state allow ball groups to thrive because of x heals, group bomb pull builds and massive ulti gen opti groups? yes.


does the current PvP state allow or enable unkillable tank builds which do uber damage? Yes - PvP is unbalanced and everyone knows it

are people cheating in PvP ? yes - everywhere. the amount of cronos users is through the roof.

does all of this mean PvP is broken? yes
do ZOS need to fix it? yes
will ZOS fix it? at the moment, seemingly not.
is vengeance the answer? maybe. its better in some areas, not in others.

BXR_Lonestar

Friendly-assasin81 wrote: »

Why is there still ballgroups in cyrodiil?
Ruins the whole campaign. Its stupid to have people run around doing nothing for the caimpaign objective and are unkillable...
They almost look like they are cheating(some of them might be)....

For the same reason there are coordinated groups for endgame PVE: it is more effective to play as a coordinated group than it is to play as a bunch of uncoordinated, ragtag group made out of miscellaneous nuts and bolts.

Friendly-assasin81

If you think killing others in cyrodiil is the objective you have no idea what cyrodiil is about.
Killing does almost nothing towards winning the campaign. The only thing ballgroups does to the campaign is to annoy other players.
And yes, many players are cheating in cyrodiil. I have reported many players that has been banned for it. And yes i will keep reporting until my keyboard starts smoking. But only players i can see cheating. I also know some players report just because they get killed with a good combo. At least they shout at me "I WILL REPORT YOU FOR CHEATING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" as a whisper.

Bottom line is, if something isnt done to ballgroups, greyhost might just get as dead as ravenwatch is now....

LadyGP

MoonlightShadow wrote: »

Since subclassing ballgroups and comp group (mini-ballgroups) have gotten worse. They can pull from multiple classes and not need as many players. The other night I saw a group of four wardens (know that was their base class because of the endless warden charms). Three of them were using the Templar Restoring Light (rune focus and remembrance) tree accompanied by the Warden Animal Companion (netch and beetles) and Warden Winter's Embrace (Polar Wind). These three were also using Dawnbreaker. The fourth was running the Necro Grave Lord instead of Templar skills combined with dark convergence, vicious death and Colossus. All of them were also moving at movement speed cap.

These four had about 20 people chasing them around a tower and cold fire siege hitting them often. They were moving so fast that about 40%+ of your attacks never went off because they were already out of line of sight. Hitting them with multiple cold fire ballista did nothing because of all their cleanses and purges. They were a small enough group that plaguebreak was ineffective. Any Damage Over Time skill was mitigated (again because of all the cleanses). They all had 40K+ Health so their Polar Wind kept their health topped up (all 4 are running it which heals you and a friend scaling on your health and it appears to stack). Then as they are running around they are just spamming their beetles, warden charm, polar wind. Then when they are ready to burst they stop and let people catch up to them. Drop Colossus with Dark Convergence pulling every one and and then Dawnbreaker everyone pulled in. Because you have 20+ people trying to kill 4, someone in the mess is guaranteed to have low health and will pop and off goes vicious death.

So what to do about them????? I have said many times in zone chat and a few times here. The best counter to ballgroups is to just leave and not give them the fight. Instead of having 20+ people tied up chasing four around a resource tower. Just leave them in the tower and go somewhere else. I know our group has been called cowards at times because if ballgroups show up, we will either avoid the ballgroup and capture the objective anyway, or we will just leave and choose another target. When multiple ballgroups show up somewhere to feed, we leave or shoot siege on them until they get board.

Best way to counter them is not give them what they want. They want kills and to feel powerful. Let them PVDoor instead. They want attention with people chasing them around towers. Let them have the resource. We can always come back to take it later. How long do you think ballgroups will last if they become PVDoor groups?? Learn to pick your fights, and when to walk away. Yeah it means losing an objective, but while the ballgroup is PVDoor go hit somewhere else.

Or better yet troll them. Practice the principles of asymmetric warfare because that is what it is. You have an overwhelmingly powerful force (multiple ballgroups) and the best tactic is not to try to hit them head on. Instead, change the terms of the fight. There have been times I took a 6 person strike team. Lit up keeps that the ballgroups would want to defend (ones with scrolls, or home keeps), and then moved on and lit up another. And cut their transit along the way. We have had three full ballgroups chasing us around the map at times. Make them run all that way for no fight. The rest of the faction is sometimes able to take advantage of our distraction and take back our home keeps.

The other counter is to make your own ballgroup. ZOS obviously not only encourages ballgroup play, it seems they actively boost them (Rush of Agony, warden charm, proxy det, ulti dump anyone?). They have made little effort to provide a counter over the last several years. And when people found a counter (Azureblight) ZOS nurfed it into the ground to protect the ballgroups. Snake in the Stars worked pretty well too, until they increased the cooldown to make it worthless. Basically casual PVP is dying in this game until they start paying attention to the average players rather than the elites and provide some form of counter. Just a couple years ago, Greyhost and Blackreach were both pop locked every weekend. Now all the campaigns are dead except Greyhost. The reason can be directly linked to how ZOS has handled PVP. There has been a significant decrease in casual PVP since subclassing, but the problems existed long before then. Every time casual players find a counter to ballgroups and comp groups (as they like to be called), ZOS has nurfed it as too powerful. Even Cold Fire Ballistas are useless now. Groups either cleanse it off, or easily out heal the damage.

So the answer for now is join a ballgroup, or stop feeding the ballgroups and farm some ap.

The reason you have so many ball groups in cyro right now is because of your very last point.

aetherix8

Friendly-assasin81 wrote: »

Bottom line is, if something isnt done to ballgroups, greyhost might just get as dead as ravenwatch is now....

Every day during last Vengeance we could read the following in the zone chat (PC EU):

1. Occasional hater informing us that “this is BS, I’m out”
2. Several sighs of relief at the absence of ballgroups and bombers because they cannot use their cheese sets anymore
3. Last but not least, infrequent but daily realization that “this is so great without ballgrps, I don’t think I can bring myself to go back to GH on Monday”

Once Vengeance was over, some people complained about it “killing Cyro” because they found themselves in an emptier campaign. Some players have left over the uncertainty regarding Cyro’s future shape. Others have left because they couldn’t bear yet another ballgroup-fest evening in Cyro.

So yeah, unless the PvP balance is fixed alongside the performance, and ballgroups lose some of their strength, chances are high that GH will end up like RW.

Shawn_PT

The best part of Cyrodiil is getting into a fight, getting instantly hit with a debuff that locks me at 3-5 FPS , and alas the only purge for it is waiting for the eventual random loading screen until it suddenly gets cleared. Or at least back to 20FPS at best. Will I be alive? Will I be in the middle of a ball group? Will I be on the opposite side of the map all of a sudden? Who knows! It's great fun! /s

When will they introduce a skill/set that gets rid of that effect? It's ruining my experience.

Xarc

Friendly-assasin81 wrote: »

Why is there still ballgroups in cyrodiil?

Because ZOS doesn't know how to solve the problem

BXR_Lonestar

The problem with ballgroups is the things that everyone suggests to "eliminate" ballgroups or "counter" ballgroups is just going to make ballgroups stronger. Look at what happened when they implemented sets designed to kill ballgroups.

Pull sets (dark convergence and rush of agony) ended up being used by ballgroups to be more efficient at killing.

Sets like Vicious Death, Hrothgar's Chill, and Plaguebreak were all used by ballgroups at some point to be more efficient at killing (and vicious death is still used today because it hasn't been nerfed to the ground).

Sets like Spellshredder and oakfather's retribution are designed to enhance your combat effectiveness against ballgroups that have all the major and minor buffs, but all this does is increase the strength of a ballgroup in ball on ball situations.

If you really want to counter ballgroups without making them stronger, you want sets that will buff the heck out of siege. Combined arms combat can take out a ballgroup right now you get the tanky brawlers working in unison with people who know what they are doing with seige. The problem is that there isn't usually that much coordination with the masses of unorganized players, and because seige damage is kind of weak vs. ballgroups, your margin of error is very thin. Buffing seige damage will increase that margin of error and make these fights more fair, but if you buff seige without the requirement to equip gear, then your just making ballgroups and zergs stronger, which is what you DO NOT want to do.

So instead, what they need is specific siege sets that increase their effectiveness. Not sets like seigemaster, which just let you see through walls and reduce the damage you take. Its a great gimick to try out, but its not that effective really. What I'm talking about are sets that we could stack on dedicated siegers that would make them worthless in hand-to-hand combat, but would make them valuable assets in any siege situation. Sets that do the following:

1. Increase the fire rate and turn rate of siege weapons
2. Increase the actual damage the siege does (both direct and DOT damage)
3. Sets that increase the duration of DoT damage of seige
4. Sets that increase the effected radius of siege
5. Sets that increase your movement speed while you have a siege weapon within a short distance from you (say 8 meters)
6. Sets that increase the duration of the status change inflicted by siege
7. Sets that have unpurgable secondary effects such as snare.

If you have sets that do any/all of these, then siege then becomes a devastating tool to use against ball groups (and zergs), but it cannot be used to empower ballgroups and zergs because players who use these sets will be basically useless outside of defensive sieging, which is precisely the situation you are in most of the time when you are fighting a ballgroup. And these sets also add nothing to the group combat effectiveness, so theres no room for it within a ballgroup.

silentxthreat

Friendly-assasin81 wrote: »

Why is there still ballgroups in cyrodiil?
Ruins the whole campaign. Its stupid to have people run around doing nothing for the caimpaign objective and are unkillable...
They almost look like they are cheating(some of them might be)....

ball groups are the main reason of lag with the add ons they use to track everything. they kill server pop and gate camp at early am hours. we need massive nerfs to heal stacking and snow treads because in this meta the only thing that kills them is a better ball group and they just dont fight each other.

if you cant fix the problems they exploit just ban them

TheAwesomeChimpanzee

aetherix8 wrote: »

Friendly-assasin81 wrote: »

Bottom line is, if something isnt done to ballgroups, greyhost might just get as dead as ravenwatch is now....

Every day during last Vengeance we could read the following in the zone chat (PC EU):

1. Occasional hater informing us that “this is BS, I’m out”
2. Several sighs of relief at the absence of ballgroups and bombers because they cannot use their cheese sets anymore
3. Last but not least, infrequent but daily realization that “this is so great without ballgrps, I don’t think I can bring myself to go back to GH on Monday”

Once Vengeance was over, some people complained about it “killing Cyro” because they found themselves in an emptier campaign. Some players have left over the uncertainty regarding Cyro’s future shape. Others have left because they couldn’t bear yet another ballgroup-fest evening in Cyro.

So yeah, unless the PvP balance is fixed alongside the performance, and ballgroups lose some of their strength, chances are high that GH will end up like RW.

Unfortunately for you, that was only true for PC EU — NA was practically dead, and so were both console servers. Even without ball groups in Vengeance, anyone with a competitive mindset can’t really enjoy such a mindless, braindead, skill-less gamemode

SneaK

BXR_Lonestar wrote: »

The problem with ballgroups is the things that everyone suggests to "eliminate" ballgroups or "counter" ballgroups is just going to make ballgroups stronger. Look at what happened when they implemented sets designed to kill ballgroups.

Pull sets (dark convergence and rush of agony) ended up being used by ballgroups to be more efficient at killing.

Sets like Vicious Death, Hrothgar's Chill, and Plaguebreak were all used by ballgroups at some point to be more efficient at killing (and vicious death is still used today because it hasn't been nerfed to the ground).

Sets like Spellshredder and oakfather's retribution are designed to enhance your combat effectiveness against ballgroups that have all the major and minor buffs, but all this does is increase the strength of a ballgroup in ball on ball situations.

If you really want to counter ballgroups without making them stronger, you want sets that will buff the heck out of siege. Combined arms combat can take out a ballgroup right now you get the tanky brawlers working in unison with people who know what they are doing with seige. The problem is that there isn't usually that much coordination with the masses of unorganized players, and because seige damage is kind of weak vs. ballgroups, your margin of error is very thin. Buffing seige damage will increase that margin of error and make these fights more fair, but if you buff seige without the requirement to equip gear, then your just making ballgroups and zergs stronger, which is what you DO NOT want to do.

So instead, what they need is specific siege sets that increase their effectiveness. Not sets like seigemaster, which just let you see through walls and reduce the damage you take. Its a great gimick to try out, but its not that effective really. What I'm talking about are sets that we could stack on dedicated siegers that would make them worthless in hand-to-hand combat, but would make them valuable assets in any siege situation. Sets that do the following:

1. Increase the fire rate and turn rate of siege weapons
2. Increase the actual damage the siege does (both direct and DOT damage)
3. Sets that increase the duration of DoT damage of seige
4. Sets that increase the effected radius of siege
5. Sets that increase your movement speed while you have a siege weapon within a short distance from you (say 8 meters)
6. Sets that increase the duration of the status change inflicted by siege
7. Sets that have unpurgable secondary effects such as snare.

If you have sets that do any/all of these, then siege then becomes a devastating tool to use against ball groups (and zergs), but it cannot be used to empower ballgroups and zergs because players who use these sets will be basically useless outside of defensive sieging, which is precisely the situation you are in most of the time when you are fighting a ballgroup. And these sets also add nothing to the group combat effectiveness, so theres no room for it within a ballgroup.

I agree with the siege remarks.

VD is still a counter to BGs. Solo bombers still disrupt ball groups.

But, the average rando in Cyro is running a selfish build with crafted sets, not Zerg busting sets. They complain about being killed by “groups” when they Zerg surf and pick the wrong fights. That’s how it is, and how it will always be. Nothing should be balanced based on these types of players. Ball groups are actually a good thing, they shouldn’t be penalized for being strategic and playing well together. It’s only a problem when your faction doesn’t have a good one.