THE REAL ZERG BUSTER

Poxheart · April 2015

You missed the point: the small group will die before they generate the ultimate needed to kill the larger group.

tino.antoninieb17_ESO · April 2015

In my opinion - this what u suggest even if it works will not kill zergs as such just zerg people will be a bit more spread for couple of seconds and thats all what u get out of it. If u say it can be applied to choke points - usually those are heavy shelled with siege and if choke cant be shelled than people have barrier on which gives them more than enough time to nuke / avoid those 3 heroes. If u suggest that those 3 are extremely tanky than they are not making significant damage to opponents and proper group will just leave them be till the end of fight. Only thing those 3 guys can use in their advantage is huge disparity in skill. I dont see good long term solution in that direction .

FENGRUSH · April 2015

Poxheart wrote: »

You missed the point: the small group will die before they generate the ultimate needed to kill the larger group.

FENGRUSH says otherwise

Panda244 · April 2015

Yes.

Joy_Division · April 2015

vortexman11 wrote: »

Joy_Division wrote: »

I'm pretty sure this will only make "pain trains" stronger as they will also reap the benefits of more ultimate gain. All these "solutions" that keep getting forwarded usually fail to recognize that anything a small group can do, so can a "zerg."

I don't think you fully read my post, the smaller group will always end up getting more ultimate per person, sure a zerg can do the same thing, but they'd end up getting less ultimate as they have less targets, in the current system with the Major/Minor Herosim buff you cannot gain ultimate any faster than anyone else, whether its 10 vs 20 or 10 vs 10.

What my post basically says is that when you are outnumbered if you can build ultimate from AoE's you'll end up getting more per person, and more in total due to having more targets

I did read your post. Contrary to what many people on this forum think, Impulse and other PBAOEs are not very good spells and have a limited use in Cyrodiil. If you believe that 3 players can charge into a 15 players and start spamming impulse and actually survive long enough to drop all those ultimates, you are wrong. Wrong now, wrong in 1.5. They will be quickly killed if those 15 enemies are anything approaching competent.

The best and most practical time to use PBAOEs is in a "pain train," because the other members provide the tanking and healing necessary for an impulse spammer to survive in close proximity to numerous enemies. If you are in a confused melee with many disorganized players around, that is the other best time to use impulse because the very chaos of the situation affords you similar protection, albeit there is considerable potential danger. However you stack it, the best way to get mileage out of PBAOEs is to be in a zerg.

This does not even consider the fact that these "pain trains" can quickly charge their own ultimates by impulse flag guards on a resource pin or by massacring large numbers of disorganized players, something they already do with limited ultimate gain.

synnerman · April 2015

I think they have found the answer....It's to allow the lag to continue so that so many people leave that there won't be enough people left in cyrodiil to zerg. I think its working. GG

Keron · April 2015

coolermh wrote: »

We just need a skill that gains expotential damage the more people it hits.

Grain of salt: This skill should be health percentage based instead of raw damage, start at 25% health removal with 1 target and cap at 50% health removal for 12 targets (doesn't get higher than 50% but hits as many as there are in the radius for 50% health each) within 7 to 10 meter radius and PBAoE so you need to get in there.

Make this the replacement for Guard in the support tree.

Hypertionb14_ESO · April 2015

Zergs do nothing but AOE...

this would like most suggestions on here, help the zerg as much if not more than the poor *** they crush.

Rune_Relic · April 2015

vortexman11 wrote: »

Rune_Relic wrote: »

vortexman11 wrote: »

Rune_Relic wrote: »

vortexman11 wrote: »

Rune_Relic wrote: »

So you answer to spreading people out is to make the already powerful..even more godlike ?
Where as if we boost siege instead, no individual gains any more godlike powers then anyone else.

I propose flash bangs from the crown store.
Anyone using magelight and detect potions gets blinded for 10 seconds.
Anyone in the blast radius gets a <20m knock away + fall damage + offbalance + stun
:d

That does specifically what its supposed to do....force people apart and make them vulnerable.
You still have to pick them off.
Cant be blocked, purged, break...only dodge.

This does not add to the damage calcs like other aoes.
the zerg is blown apart and needs single target damage to finish them (aoe wont work).
It eliminates any outgoing aoes/dots/channels from the impacted group.
ie. it eliminates damage calcs from adding to the backlog and minimises lag.
[an antil-lag bomb]

What I proposed does not make the already powerful godlike, it gives the outnumbered a fighting chance

No ...it gives you AP farming godmode upon all noobs.

And the fact that 40 "noobs" (not calling anyone a noob, just quoting) can form up and crush anything if they know how to put up siege is better?

Nope....but neither is giving one person the ability to wipe them all out with one hit.
And needless to say one specific class/race/build will be much much better at it than anyone else.

I dont mind if EVERYONE can do it regardless of skill/level and all have a achance at the same AP reward.
But thats not what you are asking for.

EDIT misread your post....yes noob siege is much better then all that power in one persons hands or a limited few min maxers
Thats why al the OP players cried.....they suddenly had a level playing field instead of being gods.
Anyway...siege do damage..that wasnt what I asked for

You still don't get my point. This is about forcing people to spread out. If they don't spread out then yes, of course there will be players that build so much ultimate that they're practically gods, and thats the fault of the mindless mass of players that did not spread out

But hey wont spread out.... they will just mitigate/heal/block/purge anything and everything you are trying to throw at them and steam roll you.

I know everyone thinks lets have a magic bomb on 100s of players and all ZOS problems will be solved but it wont, it hasnt and I will try to be as clear as possible why.

LAG. Chances are this mass brawl is going to end in lag.
So why does it lag ? Because of a backlog of all the damage calcs that still have to be processed.
Where have all the damage calcs come from ? multiple tiers of conditional damage calcs applied to varying umbers of people + hots + dots + heals etc.

So you have to remove all the damage calcs to solve both the lag issue + zerg issue at the same time.
Anything other than a 1 shot kill for everyone in the red will fail...anything else will simply intensify the damage calcs that need to be done and increase the lag further.
Do we want one shot kill of everyone in red by 1 player ? Do I really have to answer that ?

The solution then is not to have a 1 shot kill on everyone in red as that will just create uproar with the TTK as it is.
What we really want to do is stop the lag and spread the zerg.
You cannot throw damage at someone and expect them to say 'oh i will spread out as I am taking damage'...many will try to find other ways to mitigate the damage instead. Like they now do with siege ticks.
ie passive force doesn't work.

vis-a-vis...
1. you must use active forced separation that doesn't give the zerg a choice on whether it spreads out or not.
2. you must eliminate the lag (which is the main point of seperating the zerg) by removing/reduicng any active combat calcs so that the servers can clear the backlog. This means you have to drop the incoming damage to zero for a period of time.

So you need a stun to stop peoples outgoing damage/aoe/heals.
This also means they are vulnerable to wiping from a gank team [note team-play and not solo-gods]
You need to blast them apart and out of the selection radius so they get no benefit of aoe heals/purge etc
This last also means no one will use aoe on the zerg as they are too far apart so they have to be ganked instead with single target damage....further reducing damage calcs and letting the server recover.
Such a skill would be an opportune time for ZOS to literally do a clear of the damage calcs for all players involved, wiping any/all dots/hots/buffs/debuffs and further increase the server performance.

Now we test this on the major issue of cyodiil....FLAG STACKING
The zerg stacks on flag....bang.....all blown off flag ..timer resets.. server damage calcs backlog is cleared and lag removed.
If you want to take the flag you have to wipe the enemy first.
No keep lag as no one can stack......no one can rack up the ultis/aoe heals/damage.

You can of course avoid this anti lag bombs by roll dodging out of the red.
BUT if you all roll dodge out the red you are all seperating anyway.
Spreading out or not is not a choice! You will spread or be blown apart.

[EDIT: care must be taken that the stun has a cool down so 4 of 6 seconds or similar to prevent stun lock. This still gives the server 4 seconds to clear the player damage/heal/buff/dot/hot stacks]

vortexman11 · April 2015

Hypertionb14_ESO wrote: »

Zergs do nothing but AOE...

this would like most suggestions on here, help the zerg as much if not more than the poor *** they crush.

I would like to go even further as to clarify what I define to be a zerg, which might help you all better understand what Im getting at.

A zerg is a massive group of uncoordinated players that simply crush everything due to their massive numbers. A zerg does not ONLY AoE as they are not coordinated enough to do so. Guilds such as Decible, DiE, MBF are not "zergs" they are what I like to call zerg busters, they're able to (through the use of AoE's) mow down these mindless zergs, these guilds rarely have anymore than 20 people in their groups yet through organization are able to destroy zergs.

I would also like to clarify that Im not saying revert the game back to 1.5, just to start giving ultimate per each person hit, even if it was just one ultimate it would make a difference. I never said to put the game back to where Impulse was unblockable and if you stacked crit you could basically wipe out groups with that alone. Most AoE's hit for very little now compared to single target abilities (other than steel tornado but I think that's getting changed).

Currently the game is in a state where if it was 5 vs 1, all those 5 people need to do is get one light attack each on that one person and they'd already be gaining ultimate at the same pace. This is what I am saying should be changed.

michaelarryn · April 2015

coolermh wrote: »

We just need a skill that gains expotential damage the more people it hits.

No. You want a skill that has the potential to wipe an entire zerg from the single cast of one player? What I think would work are group skills (sort of like synergy skills or some sort of combo) that does massive damage or DoT.

xaraan · April 2015

Eh, no matter what you do damage wise, bigger groups will usually just be able to do more of it and it won't break up zergs. Just like seige now, it just allows bigger groups to get a couple guys out and set up seige to take out smaller groups and the zergier zerg wins. The only way they will ever lessen zerging is 1. spreading out smaller objectives all over the map that have to be held consistently throughout the 'war' and 2. lessen XP even more than they do so that if 30 people run over two guys, nobody gets any xp/ap at all - bet you you'll see less people zerging then. (And yes, they'd have to do it by hit/heal to target, not by people just being "in a group" otherwise people would just get in small groups and use TS to coordinate).

Spangla · April 2015

Personally I found bat spamming through a zerg great fun.

Now dieing to a zerg is boring

Sarousse · April 2015

They removed the AoE limit but got the awful idea to make the damage weaker when hitting many targets.

Thanks to this GENIOUS idea, the small groups still can't fight the large ones.

And instead of giving real AE control abilities to deal out with the masses, they gave us useless hard hitting siege weapons.

We don't want to play with siege weapons, WE WANT TO PVP WITH OUR AVATARS.

Well nothing new @Zenimax pvp devs. They still love the huge zergs.

Zhoyzu · April 2015

Your argument is solid and makes sense. I have to say i agree.
However i wouldnt want to see bat swarm city again. I also like the way ult builds now feels much more fluid and logical.

I support this but don't want to see it reverted back into the game.

i also dont know how aoe cap removals would affect this and dont want to be on the receiving end of finding out either lol.

SafiyerAmitora · April 2015

vortexman11 wrote: »

You're all going to hate me...

Nobody can hate on Vortex if I have a say in it. NOBODY. D=<

vortexman11 · April 2015

Zhoyzu wrote: »

However i wouldnt want to see bat swarm city again. I also like the way ult builds now feels much more fluid and logical.

I support this but don't want to see it reverted back into the game.

i also dont know how aoe cap removals would affect this and dont want to be on the receiving end

Yes I agree with you on this point, I don't want it reverted back to how it was as I was just using 1.5 as an example. Ultimate gain was so much better then as you didn't just get a buff that gives you ultimate, you got ultimate based on attacks, crits, blocking, interrupting people, knocking people down, and so on.

I doubt that if this ever happens (which it wont) it'll go back to Batswarm city, that things been nerfed so many times and now with all this fire siege...

xylena · April 2015

#NerfPurge

vortexman11 · April 2015

WarrioroftheWind_ESO wrote: »

I think this would be a bad idea. People gain ultimate stupid fast anyway as we've seen in some of these big battles, even small ones. I really think they should just buff the dmg of abilities like Detonation and make it less clunky. Abilities like pulsar do way more damage and much more efficiently in dmg to cost. Maybe they should bring back non-dispellable snares from oilpots and caltrops, because otherwise there's no use in being careful about entering a breach. I've seen groups just waltz up inside keeps and I've been IN them because it's ridiculously easy with the correct buff setup. Or they could just bring back ground oil. The only people who would die to it were the dumb or careless ones, and people have been very dumb and careless with breaches lately. Alot of people also overlook the use of anti-anti siege, positioning sieges to hit the breach and first flag room to really throttle enemy resistance. I've been on the receiving end of it often enough but I rarely see my own group using it. People need to get into the habit of it more.

People don't gain ultimate stupid fast anymore, whether you're outnumbered or in an even fight you all gain it at the same rate as long as you have your Major/Minor Heroism buffs, this is silly as it means 10 people will gain (I think its 3 ultimate a second for 8 seconds?) 240 ultimate all together in the time one person gains 24. That one person being so obviously outnumbered should at least have the increased ultimate gain in order to have any little bit of a chance, he's not going to back up to place a fire ballista.

Having ultimate gain being based on a Major Minor buff system is insane as we used to gain ultimate for doing "skillful" things such as interrupting abilities and so on, now all you have do is light attack someone.

Draxys · April 2015

vortexman11 wrote: »

WarrioroftheWind_ESO wrote: »

I think this would be a bad idea. People gain ultimate stupid fast anyway as we've seen in some of these big battles, even small ones. I really think they should just buff the dmg of abilities like Detonation and make it less clunky. Abilities like pulsar do way more damage and much more efficiently in dmg to cost. Maybe they should bring back non-dispellable snares from oilpots and caltrops, because otherwise there's no use in being careful about entering a breach. I've seen groups just waltz up inside keeps and I've been IN them because it's ridiculously easy with the correct buff setup. Or they could just bring back ground oil. The only people who would die to it were the dumb or careless ones, and people have been very dumb and careless with breaches lately. Alot of people also overlook the use of anti-anti siege, positioning sieges to hit the breach and first flag room to really throttle enemy resistance. I've been on the receiving end of it often enough but I rarely see my own group using it. People need to get into the habit of it more.

People don't gain ultimate stupid fast anymore, whether you're outnumbered or in an even fight you all gain it at the same rate as long as you have your Major/Minor Heroism buffs, this is silly as it means 10 people will gain (I think its 3 ultimate a second for 8 seconds?) 240 ultimate all together in the time one person gains 24. That one person being so obviously outnumbered should at least have the increased ultimate gain in order to have any little bit of a chance, he's not going to be back up to place a fire ballista.

Having ultimate gain being based on a Major Minor buff system is insane as we used to gain ultimate for doing "skillful" things such as interrupting abilities and so on, now all you have do is light attack someone.

I agree, ultimate gain feels so static right now. I don't know how anyone could possibly like it that way. It's so undynamic, unrewarding, and utterly boring.

EskimoBrother · April 2015

agreed. also seems they did the whole aoe thing wrong, instead of you dealing less damage after hitting an x amount of players, you should do more.

vortexman11 · May 2015

I'll never understand how people see the one shot instant kill of a 30 man zerg due to the use of one skill to be the answer to anything.

Agrippa_Invisus · May 2015

For many reasons, I disagree with this.

One of the few balance changes I agree with was the Ultimate gain change.

You're asking for the internal game mechanics to give you an inherent advantage to being surrounded and outnumbered. Something that should be a) avoided and b) defeated through good tactics and play, not by being handed a crutch. A crutch that was wildly abused during the old method of Ulti gain.

Adding to that, it's Ultimates that are often the exacerbater of lag events. Adding more Meteors to this game does it no favors in the department of performance. I foresee even worse lag should this change.

It's the purging and the healing that's too strong right now, making it hard to use other methods to bring down a blob of players. Additional ulti gain would not empower players to defeat these groups, instead rebalancing purge and heals is necessary.

AhPook_Is_Here · May 2015

I like it as long as they also leave the current system in place so tanks can generate ultimate at a reasonable rate.

I also think it would be cool if they rolled back to 1.5 for PVP but kept things in 1.6 for PVE. I really think at this point we need a game with 2 combat systems, one for PVP where all skills work one way, and another or PVE where all skills work a different way.

Sanct16 · May 2015

Don't you see how pointless this discussion is? Zenimax wants large group to be the way to go. They don't want small groups being able to compete with large ones. Can anyone name a change that actually helped small groups? I can't remember a single one. To be honest they just made it even harder for small groups.
Negate nerf, wall of elements fix, ultimate gain, sieges now dealing absurd amounts of damage made playing with smaller groups a joke. The fix of wall of elements ess needed in some way but now it is just laughable. I really liked that you had to think about when to purge. Now trains can just have 4 players doing nothing else than spamming purge. In 1.5 we had an uncapped ability that did decent damage and had the potential do deal great damage if someone purged without thinking. Now there is no drawback about purging and nothing you do has an effect on the train.
Negate used to give way too many resources, I agree that a nerf was needed. But it also used to negate healing springs and other effects casted in it. Situational awareness was needed to not feed your opponents infinite resources. Ultimate gain used to reward outnumbered players using the right skills. Reducing ultimate gain slightly would have been fine, the new system of everyone getting the same ultimate is crap.

Does anyone notice what the changes have in common? Individual skill is now WAAAAAAAAY less important and three gap between a good and a bad player is nearly not existent anymore when it comes to groups.
If you have enough players in your train you can just give everyone a certain role and they can just spam one skill and . it is fine. players 1-4 spam purge. players 4-20 spam healing springs and barrier. players 20-50 spam one aoe damage skill.
In 1.5 this was possible too but if the purged spammed purge on wall of elements you died. If the healers spammed healing springs in an enemy negate the enemy got infinite resources and your own group only 1/3 healing (only Initial hit). Together with s banner and and a meatbag every raid wiped. Now they just spam their skills and win.

Sieges will never be a good idea as small groups suffer way more from getting hot by a siege than big groups.

Oughash · May 2015

Sanct16 wrote: »

Don't you see how pointless this discussion is? Zenimax wants large group to be the way to go. They don't want small groups being able to compete with large ones. Can anyone name a change that actually helped small groups? I can't remember a single one. To be honest they just made it even harder for small groups.
Negate nerf, wall of elements fix, ultimate gain, sieges now dealing absurd amounts of damage made playing with smaller groups a joke. The fix of wall of elements ess needed in some way but now it is just laughable. I really liked that you had to think about when to purge. Now trains can just have 4 players doing nothing else than spamming purge. In 1.5 we had an uncapped ability that did decent damage and had the potential do deal great damage if someone purged without thinking. Now there is no drawback about purging and nothing you do has an effect on the train.
Negate used to give way too many resources, I agree that a nerf was needed. But it also used to negate healing springs and other effects casted in it. Situational awareness was needed to not feed your opponents infinite resources. Ultimate gain used to reward outnumbered players using the right skills. Reducing ultimate gain slightly would have been fine, the new system of everyone getting the same ultimate is crap.

Does anyone notice what the changes have in common? Individual skill is now WAAAAAAAAY less important and three gap between a good and a bad player is nearly not existent anymore when it comes to groups.
If you have enough players in your train you can just give everyone a certain role and they can just spam one skill and . it is fine. players 1-4 spam purge. players 4-20 spam healing springs and barrier. players 20-50 spam one aoe damage skill.
In 1.5 this was possible too but if the purged spammed purge on wall of elements you died. If the healers spammed healing springs in an enemy negate the enemy got infinite resources and your own group only 1/3 healing (only Initial hit). Together with s banner and and a meatbag every raid wiped. Now they just spam their skills and win.

Sieges will never be a good idea as small groups suffer way more from getting hot by a siege than big groups.

This is a good post. The couple of months when purge was "broken" were actually quite good. ZOS didn't realize that only a few minor tweaks needed to be made from that point.

Huntler · May 2015

xylena wrote: »

#NerfPurge

I've come to the conclusion that people who think Nerfing Purge will solve the zerg problem are actually zergers themselves that have never come close to small man groups countering zergs or don't understand the game in any form whatsoever.

vortexman11 · May 2015

Agrippa_Invisus wrote: »

For many reasons, I disagree with this.

One of the few balance changes I agree with was the Ultimate gain change.

You're asking for the internal game mechanics to give you an inherent advantage to being surrounded and outnumbered. Something that should be a) avoided and b) defeated through good tactics and play, not by being handed a crutch. A crutch that was wildly abused during the old method of Ulti gain.

Adding to that, it's Ultimates that are often the exacerbater of lag events. Adding more Meteors to this game does it no favors in the department of performance. I foresee even worse lag should this change.

It's the purging and the healing that's too strong right now, making it hard to use other methods to bring down a blob of players. Additional ulti gain would not empower players to defeat these groups, instead rebalancing purge and heals is necessary.

Im not entire sure in which way you mean to rebalance those skills, but if its anything like what I've already hear then it wont change anything. Nerfing purge would hurt zergs, yes. But it will also hurt small groups, we've already seen the obvious with zergs being able to lay down more siege due to have more numbers, so any changes to purge will just make things worse.

Again Im not entire sure in what way you'd like heals rebalanced but in Cyrodiil they're already 15% less effective than they used to be, a better route would be to increase the Major Defile debuff back to 50% or 40%, whatever it was in 1.5 as 30% is honestly not enough. Either way this will still hurt smaller groups just as much if not more than larger groups as it is again a problem with numbers, more people = more healers.

Yes Agrippa, my idea gives people a crutch, but what other way is there to have a fighting chance against overwhelming numbers? 99% of the suggestions people give help out the zergs simply due to the fact that they have more people to do more tasks. The only other idea I've seen on these forums is that of an AoE that has its damage multiplied based on the amount of people it hits, which isn't an entirely bad idea...but I honestly don't think one shotting a stack of 30 people is the answer to anything.