None of your points were opinions, they were just factualy wrong. And I brought counter points to each of them. You don't even show me the same curtesy.

For instance, your first point on this latest comment once again makes me doubt you actually read.
You just repeated something I carefuly addressed in my previous cimment without even aknowledging my rebutal.
Were you to answer to my arguments, we'd be having a discution. Right now it just feels like you're putting your fingers in your ears yelling "lalalalala".

I'll try again, in shorter: Aoes are now the most viable abilities. There are no situations where you should slot a single target ability if you have access to an aoe instead.

This is the case because any enemy you would encounter should be abusing the target cap and blob. If they don't, thet are no threat and aoe would suffice. If they do, then aoe are 6 guaranteed hits and are better blob vs blob dps.
Removing stacking give single targets a role even against organised groups.

I also addressed previously your next point:
- First, 6 meter radius is way larger than most offensive aoes. Even single target heals have longer ranges than attacks. I can pop a healing ward on friendlies before being able to attack their oponent.
- those buffs are situational to when having to go in a chokepoint. You should not use them all the time, they are here to help a specific task.
- without caps, stacking is a liability when not forced. They are not a practical reason to stack as it would mean attracting aoe fire that would out dps the healing/ buffs obtained. This is the result of damage being faster and more sustainable than heals/buffs.

In short, those mechanics are not incentives to stack but bonuses when there are no other choices.

And as for your last point, you seem to be under the impression only your enemies will have uncaped aoes.
No target caps actualy favors the attackers.

First, oil is strong only because the users can be protected by stacking.
Without caps, oil is a death sentence. It has no range, forces you to be immobile and has a cooldown. Any other siege engine or aoe ability would be superior to it. It would be useful only as door defenses to counter rams.

Also, being inside the keep is more of a chokepoint than being outside it. Attackers can carpet bomb the area before charging, then use the "breach tools" mentionned earliers.
The charge is actually getting at the same disadvantage the defenders were at all along, so it's more like leveling the field.

For external points like resources, when you get on the flag the battle is already won anyway. You can spread out and suround it.
It's only a chokepoint if you let the enemy make it one.

I'd say you should be more worried about how much harder it is going to be to defend.
That would be a valid opinion about the removal of target caps.

Yes, this is degrading. You show once again a lack of understanding for the discusion at hand.
I chose my words for a reason.

Note that I used "most viable" and "should". This is the whole point of this discussion. Not that it is imposible to go another way, but no other ways are viable or as viable.
Target caps create a situation where there is a clear cut superior strategy, using anything else is gimping yourself.

To use your anecdote as an example, if that group was stacking, you would have killed them faster using aoes.
To stay in anecdotes, my best single target ability is endless fury when it procs a finisher at 1k damages. It involves aiming and specific conditions.
On the other hand, for barely more magica, the worst aoe I have volcanic rune at 275 damage with a chance to knock up if they aren't cc imune.
So best case scenario against worst case scenario, skewing the numbers in favor of single target damage, they still are a loss of over 50% dps.
I don't use a stamina build but the calculation seem to go the same between poison arrow and volley. Same for whirlwind and its morphs.

Against a group stacking, unless you have single target abilities that can do more than 6 times the damage of an aoe, you should always use the aoe.

And on the impulse group point of view, would spreading out even be an option?
In the case of you using single target, stacking makes it at best a bit harder to it consistently the same target. At worst it has no impact.
If you were using aoes to maximise dps, spreading out would have actually harmed them by reducing their damage mitigation.
There isn't a choice here. Stacking was the best defensive move for them.

On you end, had they switched offensive tools, should you have spread out?
Well you ofered single targets easy to focus fire while losing some group healing ability, so no, you should not have.

In conclusion, while many things remain possible, it doesn't make them valid choices.
That's the core of the discussion, target caps reduce the breadth to only one optimum strategy: Stack and use aoe.
Anything else is to gimp ourselves for fun or principles. Idealy, play to win and play for fun should coincide.

If you had read the post instead of skimmed it, perhaps you'd know.

They are stronger than single damage only when guaranteed 6 targets.

They are guaranteed those targets only because people stack.
Even in keep assaults there are rarely 6 targets at the same area when fighting people unaware of the target cap.

If people didn't stack they'd be inferior in damage and sustainability. For ground targeted aoes, harder to aim than ranged single targets.
Target caps enforces people stacking at all times, remove them and single target damages become viable.


It's quite simple really, aoes are opportunistic in nature.
Reduce their opportunities, and you reduce their use.

Some people on these forums will just never understand that no AoE caps are bad. No matter what you tell them they will stay ignorant and stick to their opinion of that "removing AoE caps will fix everything".

Krinaman if you seriously think that with no AoE cap that ist safe to stack in those amounts then I really cant tell you anymore. The AoE cap is actually protecting the Blobs at the moment.

A group can hardly get near an impulse blob at the moment and the damage from ranged AoE and Siege AoE is not enough damage to scale the heals due to the cap. When they get inside a keep its worse , without negate (ultimate) its very hard to kill them because the heals and synergies protect them from the capped damage. They even use this tactic in the trials now , just mindlessly aoeing everything down. This game will become boring very quickly if this continues.

"Heals are so damn large you cover an entire battlefield."

/sigh healing springs has a 8 meter radius.

"Damaging Synergies are often ranged and/or mostly ained to be used by melee characters."

Huh? I can't think of a single synergy you can activate at range. They all require you to be near the skill. I.E. (banner, talons, bone shield, intensify, whatever).

"In a world without caps, all of them are a liability if you stack to use them."

That was exactly my point. Uncapping AOEs makes grouping a liability.

"If you consider to continue stacking when the caps get removed, you are a bad player and will suffer."

Why wouldn't people still stack? The group of 50 rolls up on a group of 5. The 5 spam their uncapped AOEs, the 50 spam their uncapped AOEs. The 50 do more damage, have more heals, have more synergies, have more buffs, have more CC. The 5 die a quick death while the 50 take more damage then before but just heal through it and move on. Although if the 50 are smart they would be ranging the 5 down long before AOE range in the first place (which is true even with capped AOEs)

lol

@Columba‌

You disregard the fact that this game started without knowledge of the target caps. Hence it had no effect on the behavior of players.
We can still see remnants of the game without caps when playing with and against players that aren't organized or do not know of its existence.

We can predict the impact of no cap due to that knowledge of how ESO players behaved without them.
How they behaved after them matches the behavior observed in other games that had these mechanics. (gw2 and shadowbane for example)

History and other examples aren't the only way we can predict the behavior of players. Aoe caps are a bad concept in theory as well.
You talk about design 101, but show lack of knowledge, or perhaps understanding, of decision/game theory and behaviorialism.
Did you miss the other classes?
Either way, you and I are unimportant, but profesional game designers should know better.

The implementation of caps, or at least their reveal, was the reckless endeavor.
It's easy to see how it changed the game over night and enabled stacking to become a predominant tactic, just as it was easy to predict it would.
Their removal is a sure way to go back to a more stable game as the caps are the cause of the issues we see.

Many have shown the flaws of caps and the advantages of no caps, but I have yet to see one person go over the positive impact of target caps.
This is where the burden of proof is on you.
Until you or someone else does, caps brought nothing but imbalance and bad behaviors to the game.


@Krinaman‌ ,

"/sigh healing springs has a 8 meter radius."

And a 28 meters range, so yeah, it can heal pretty far.
But you failed to see my point, so here is me spelling it out:

Healing and buffing abilities:
Healing ward 28m radius
rapid regeneration 28 meters radius.
Combat prayer 20m radius.
Rushed ceremony, 28m
Other templar abilities 12m or 10m
Cleanse and barrier 12m radius
Siege shield 10m
Rapid maneuver 20m

And on the other hand, offensive abilities:
Impulse: 8m
Lightning splash: 4m, 6m when morphed for radius
Negate: 8m
Storm Atronach: 6m
Volcanic Rune: 3m
Blazing shield end explosion: 10m I believe?
Batswarm: 10m
Soul Tether: 6m
Whirlwind: 5m
DK standard: 8m
Fiery breath 10m as a cone
Volley: 5m
Arrow spray: 20m as a cone

And just for discussion's sake, gap closers:
Focused charge: 22m
Shield charge: 22m
Critical charge: 22m
Teleport Strike: 22m
Dragon leap: 20m or 28m

So yeah, healing/buffing abilities nearly always have larger radius than damage abilities. They do not require you to stack to use them.
Also, most of the ranged aoe damage abilities are ultimates, and far less spamable than heals.

I included gap closers as well to show you that the skills also seem to be meant to be used in 3 layers:
- Melee/frontline
- Ranged damage
- Healers

The game, aside from target caps, seems designed for us to spread out.

"Huh? I can't think of a single synergy you can activate at range. They all require you to be near the skill. I.E. (banner, talons, bone shield, intensify, whatever)."

Bad wording on my part, I meant it as many synergies are on ranged abilities.
You could have deducted that by the part mentionning how they are aimed to be used by melee characters.

Banner, talons, bone shield, etc are the tools of dk/tanks. It's the same for slip away and other close range abilities with synergies.
Then there are the ranged damage synergies, like lightning splash and storm astronach.
All of them are meant to support a melee / close quarter front line either from within or from far away.

Again, essentially allowing people to spread out in several lines but still work together.

"That was exactly my point. Uncapping AOEs makes grouping a liability."

I already explained above that the healing and synergies advantage of grouping remain. But I'll go deeper and explain how actually better for grouping it would be.

First, you still have the organic advantage of numbers: more resource pool and regeneration, more firepower and damage is still spread out over more people.

Second, by spreading out, you can have a rotation of the frontline rather than having an all or nothing situation we have now.
Someone gets injured, they fall back to get healed while someone else takes his place.
Make more enemies rotate and you push the frontline and gain ground.

Now, the fight is mostly: get in the middle of the enemy, and keep spamming until they stop moving or you're all dead.

Third, spreading out means there is a frontline, being in a group means having an easier view of where the line is and where to fall back to someone knowing your hp level to heal you. Or, on the healer end, see where to go to heal someone in need.

Fourth, coordination remain an advantage. You'll group just to be sure not to go fight at a keep where you'd end up alone.
That and the ability to do a focus strike on the flank of a now multi line spread out larger force.

Why wouldn't people still stack?

Because even 5 people shooting first would one shot them all. Simple as that.

To go in more details: The average human reaction time is of 200ms, the servers have 45ms up and down and the time to turn to locate the source of attack could be a while as well.
That's enough time for 2-3 attacks per members of the 5 before the fastest of the 50 can start reacting.
275dmg x 2.5 attacks x 5 players = 3437.5 dmg
Enough to one shot plenty of people, and It would be even more if the 5 used CC as their first strike.

For the rest, you are correct, in a spread out formation and in the open field, a group of 50 will roll over a group of 5, as they should.
It's actually funny that you list the organic advantages of grouping here and couldn't see them earlier.

Anyway that's the whole point, not having 5 always kill 50, but have the 50 not be virtualy invulnerable because of game mechanics but win through actual combat.

And a 28 meters range, so yeah, it can heal pretty far.

The range is pointless. You want people stacked on the circle so they all can be healed. If people are all spread out the healers need to spread all the healing circles around trying to figure which people need healed.

But you failed to see my point, so here is me spelling it out:

I didn't fail to see it. I simply don't agree with it. You list a bunch of skills that have a various different radiuses. To be able to use them all you would need to be within the smallest of those radiuses. Plus as many of the skills are centered on the caster all players need to be within half the radius. Which based on your list is 5m. Put a group of 40 in a 5 meter area and you get a blob.

Even if it was larger you would still end up stacking or near stacking simply because it's the simplest way to ensure you stay in range. Even if people managed to run around with 40 or more people in a 20 meter radius people will still complain about it being a giant zerg. It will almost certainly still be called a zerg ball.

Plus if said group of 40 was spread out like that the bat swarm guy could hit 10 of them at once if uncapped. Requiring the group to spread even more to minimize AOEs.

Seriously, go throw some caltrops on the ground (28m radius) and imagine 40 people standing in it. Then come back here and tell me that's spread out.

Again, essentially allowing people to spread out in several lines but still work together.

Players could do that but why would they? Why would they try to organize these lines which would be constantly shifting with every flank?

It would be the most inefficient and least effective way to do it plus it would be an organizational nightmare.

So I stand by my position that the group mechanics basically require it as it's the only reasonable way it will work in the game.

That's enough time for 2-3 attacks per members of the 5 before the fastest of the 50 can start reacting.

Okay sure. If you have 50 players that are completely unaware of their surroundings they could get wiped by 5 people. Of course, right now 5 people could set up 5 oil catapults and wipe the same group.

Krinaman wrote: »

The range is pointless. You want people stacked on the circle so they all can be healed. If people are all spread out the healers need to spread all the healing circles around trying to figure which people need healed.

You really can't see past the current gameplay, can you?
No you do not want to have them all stacked on the circle because in spread out fights, not all of them are under fire at the same time.
You only have the frontline to watch, and eventual saves from flanks.

Heck, healers have been complaining that their roles are dull due to smart healing and not having to select targets, and you don't see the positive in giving them a way to be active?

Any change that gives a role a linear skill test is positive for the game.
Currently, a pvp healer basically just has a binary skill test: Are you able to click at your feet?if yes, you pass.
Spread out fights mean that you see a scale of progression between noob healers and great healers. Something players can work on to improve and stay involved in the game on the long term.

Krinaman wrote: »

I didn't fail to see it. I simply don't agree with it. You list a bunch of skills that have a various different radiuses. To be able to use them all you would need to be within the smallest of those radiuses. Plus as many of the skills are centered on the caster all players need to be within half the radius. Which based on your list is 5m. Put a group of 40 in a 5 meter area and you get a blob.

My point was that these skills are not a reason to stack.
They are large enough that you can spread out without losing access to their benefits, and in a spread out formation, their benefits are not as necessary.
You have to use all those abilities when stacking because you are stacked, not the other way around.
You get hit by oil catapults because you're a yummy target as a stack, hence the need to cleanse, you get hit by aoes because you are stacked, so you need healing for everyone all the time.
This is a chicken and the egg situation.

If a group was spread out, then only a fraction of them would get hit by each aoe. Then the healers would just have to react/anticipate by using their abilities. Activity which require much less efforts than aoe attacks.

It requires less efforts than attack mostly due to smart healing, for most skills, but also due to how area overlapping works:
(as a side note, you may confuse radius and diameter?)
The area of a circle does not scale linearly with the size of the radius:
Area = π x radius x radius

The area impacted by impulse/grand healing is of 201.06m2 for a radius of 8.
The area impacted by siege shield is 314.16m2 for a radius of only 2 more.

Having the smalest heal/buff being the same size than the second largest damage aoe, and going up to more than double the radius means a lot.

In practice, what it means is that as a healer, you always have access to more targets than enemies have access to and you don't have to be as accurate than them.

As a group, the more you use that edge space, the less dps your group takes, and the more hps it receives.
Hence, spreading out is the proper solution to maximise efficiency.

Krinaman wrote: »

Even if it was larger you would still end up stacking or near stacking simply because it's the simplest way to ensure you stay in range. Even if people managed to run around with 40 or more people in a 20 meter radius people will still complain about it being a giant zerg. It will almost certainly still be called a zerg ball.

Plus if said group of 40 was spread out like that the bat swarm guy could hit 10 of them at once if uncapped. Requiring the group to spread even more to minimize AOEs.

As I said earlier, you don't need to be particulary close to have the benefits of heals (28m range + 8 radius is the max for heals)

But just for the sake of discussion:
20m radius is 40m wide and an area of 1256.64 m2.
For 40 players, that's a player density of around 0.0318 per square meter.
(of course players will never have perfect repartition, but with constant movement we can assume an average)

A bat swarm has 10m radius, so it impacts 314.16 m2, so 9.99 targets in average. So your estimates are accurate in a vacuum.

Perhaps it is my faith in humanity that leads me astray, but I do believe that in practice, at least with half competent groups, a bat swarmer would have an impact on the player density.
Perhaps seeing him come close and trigger his aoe? Maybe even try to avoid it?

And both seeing and avoiding are much easier done when your prime directive is not to stay stacked around the crown.

Krinaman wrote: »

Seriously, go throw some caltrops on the ground (28m radius) and imagine 40 people standing in it. Then come back here and tell me that's spread out.

But 28m radius is spread out.
Even using the minimum heal radius(8m) would be spread out, comparatively to the stacking we have now.

Those 40 players now are aiming for the smallest incoming damage radius, which would be 3m for volcanic runes. That's where the target cap gives them the most advantage.
In the groups I've been in, we were at 5m radius at most when starting to move due to player reaction time. 1m radius when imobile(2m diameter).
And that was without using voice coms.

For caltrops, 28m is the range, the radius is more like 12 or 14m. I don't have the numbers available, but it's not 28m.
The better in game representation for 28m is how far you can aim/trigger single target abilities as most of the ranges are 28m.
There is enough room for more than 40 players to not be cliping into each other.

Krinaman wrote: »

Players could do that but why would they? Why would they try to organize these lines which would be constantly shifting with every flank?

It would be the most inefficient and least effective way to do it plus it would be an organizational nightmare.

So I stand by my position that the group mechanics basically require it as it's the only reasonable way it will work in the game.

They don't organise it.
It's a system of "inteligent agents" where each player does individually what is best fror him.
It occurs naturally due to how skills for each role are setup in the game.
That's how unorganized/new players instinctively play now.

As an individual, players always try to be as far away from danger as possible.
If their abilities are short range, they'll be at short range, if they have longer range, they'll stay at long range, and if they are healers, they'll stay in range of those they want to heal but keep them as a wall with the enemies.

A leader can work with that to create contexts where he shifts this natural balance for the enemy. Either through focus fire, charges, retreating, etc.
Under stackign rules, he just has to move to the location he wants things dead.
Like healing, this is a net positive for a role to remain interesting long term.

Krinaman wrote: »

Okay sure. If you have 50 players that are completely unaware of their surroundings they could get wiped by 5 people. Of course, right now 5 people could set up 5 oil catapults and wipe the same group.

Well ,we have magical stealth in the game, even a very large group can sneak in range of another group and get several attacks in.
Even aware and quick to react players will still get hit a couple times before fighting back. And in a group, reaction time is not unique, so the retaliation will not be immediately at full power.
It's not bad players that are at risk, but all stacking groups.

But that's beside the point, it is just a means to an end and will most likely never happen.
The fear of it happenning is enough to prevent it from happenning.
Players just won't stay in a stack.

There are no other reasons compeling them to stack anyway, as even healing/buffing gets more efficient and engaging by spreading out.

The point of my reply was that you consider those skills necessary because in the current meta they are.
Change the meta, and they become situational.

Let's take barrier as an example, it's an ultimate. A slot with a high opportunity cost. Today, it is worth slotting barrier because there are no penalties, even rewards, for stacking, so the group is always in a situation where barrier is going to be beneficial.

In a game where stacking has drawbacks, like being one shoted by a much smaller group, and no benefits, like passive dodge chance, the damage shield barrier brings will only be a small delay and out dpsed by the incoming uncaped aoes.

Remember, shields don't naturally get damage mitigation, and they would have lost the mechanical dodge chance the target caps brings them.
At best, the small group would need to be 7 instead of 5 to one shot them.
It won't be worth it to run it non stop. And it won't be possible to maintain the ultimate cost even if all members of the group would carry it.
Another ultimate would be preferable most of the time, until you have to go through a situation where you are forced to stack.
Situations you can usually foresee and change your slots accordingly.

And that pretty much goes the same for most beneficial abilities. They are either heals over time or much more expensive than damage dealing abilities.
They don't have the sustainability to be a reason to stack up.

The best defense against aoe is to avoid them, keep resources for heals when only necessary and the easiest way is to preemptively not be an easy target. (be spreading out)

It leaves the enemies with little options if they want to use aoes: to focus fire one zone with ranged aoes(3 to 6m radius) or push in with pbaoes (10m radius at worst).
For 10m, we already estimated that at worst, that's 10 targets hit instead of 40.
For 3 to 6m, that would be 0.9 to 3.6 targets hit instead of 40.

And that's without taking into account that we see a red circle on the ground that we're able to dodge out of. And the risk factor and the ease of avoiding pbaoes when an enemy is seen crossing the line of skrimmage when it exists.

It's also considering a fairly decent sized group (40) that constraints itself to the range of healing (28m). Smaller groups or non limited groups would have a lower hit rate, and would still have access to heals (through healer repartition, explained later and organic fall back lines, explained in the previous post)
Aoes will not be viable as default attack, but only on oportunities where enemies clump up by mistake/through the flow of battle.

And to go in more details regarding healers repartition:
As beneficial aoes have a "smart" aspect, a larger radius and a longer reach than negative ones, they are easier to use in a reactive way, and much more efficient when only a small fraction of your team gets hit.
For example, templar "*** noes!" heals generaly hit 3 friendlies, around as many as a well placed ranged aoe.
Even if a group was spread out on a line of 56m wide, against a keep wall for instance, the templar/healers in the middle would be able to heal every one.
And those at the furthest edges would be able to impact 50% of the members.
That's far much more overlap than necessary compared to the size of offensive aoes being able to hit at best 10% at range, and 25% at close range.
Not to mention than not having to heal non stop (current situation as a stack) means that healers can have a choice of a more varied gameplay of helping out with dps or stand 20m behind the line and heal it continuously.

And this is all about having a meaningful choice.
Now, you have a single most viable choice.
You have the "physical" ability to do other things, but stacking is just far superior to anything else.

Without caps, people will spread out.
But there are plenty of ways to spread out compared to only one way to stack.
Eventually, each leader/groups will have their own style. Fighting against them will feel different and add variety to the fighting.
It also opens up many other roles that just can't exist in todays framework.

(for your remark on magical detection, it requires a consumable cost and an oportunity cost to have potions on cooldown in case of attack. The cheaper way to be preemptive about it is to just not be an easy target, and perhaps have some assigned scouts on each side of the group.)

We are still discussing the same thing. I may just go in too many details.
Here's a tl;dr:

First, I explained why heals and buffs are not a reason to stack:
They have neither the potency nor the sustainability to out heal/shield incoming uncaped damage.
They may feel strong enough to you, but it's mostly because the dodge chance from stacking makes them more viable than they actually are.
People will have to spread out.
But they will not lose the heal/buffs benefits from grouping due to their ranges.

I then went on to explain how heals and buffs are actually made more efficient by spreading out due to no aoe cap, and reiterated that its partly due to how aoes are also made weaker by having no caps.
Using the average targets aoes have access to and the average targets heals/buffs have access to, we have mathematical proof about those two statements.

I added a closing note on what it could mean for healers and group play, and how it falls in line with the core issue of the target cap discusion: player choice.

Healers won't all have to heal the same way, just as groups won't have to all play the same way. And this is positive for the long term health of the game.