Fighting Steeltornado blobs

Kas · September 2015

How'd you fight 30+ tornados spammers as a smaller (whatever 'smaller' means, for now just assume that doing the same thing as the enemy is out of the question) group yourself.

it's no longer possible to:

1) permablock while fighting
2) dodge cancel every of your own attacks

At a certain number of players. a steeltornado will outdps any heal's hps due to the different AoE cap mechanics for damage and heals. Previously, this used number used to be somewhere far, far away, due to the two mitigation techniques mentioned above. For unblocked steeltornados, however, it seems to be well below numbers your typically meet in cyrodiil (especially once IC access is gated again). The 50% doesn't change much since heals and damage are (almost) equally effected.

If there a "counter" to it? Are zerg battles now worse than ever? Is dodging zergs and forcing them to split if they want any AP / objectives at all the only thing left to do?

I'm used to challenging and (succesfully) fighting 24+ with ~15people. However, trying that yesterday blew us apart - without a real fight at all. Just evaporated on impact. Granted, what we saw were mostly 15 v 40 which we would have probably lost in 1.6 as well, but the time to die went from something around 30sec to a minute to about 3 seconds.

At least my templar's solo pvp-ability was buffed so much I can't be mad at the patch ^^

twistedmonk · September 2015

i don't know...

does your group coordinate barrier + warhorn and save all your ultimates for the initial push.... are you on teamspeak to coordinate all this...

pretty sure our group of 15 never lost to steel tornado spammers...like ever...

bad groups are bad...

Junipus · September 2015

Have you tried breaking the blob apart using various ccs and knock backs?

It's more difficult right now as every PvEr and others are slotting more AoE on their bars for grinding and the narrow spaces within IC so you don't have so many pugs using single target skills to little avail.

Try bringing a boss with you too, have a NB lure him around behind you since most large groups aren't organised enough to heal through both your damage and the boss aoe.

Kas · September 2015

grp consists of players that win theri 1v5's on a relugar basis, usually occupy a large portion 1-10 of campaign leaderboards and pre-patch would have most likely won similar matchups.

i was talking about outside-pvp. seeing those two comments, I'd say you are yet to experience the horror that 40-60people spamming steeltornado have become in outside cyrodiil...

twistedmonk · September 2015

well..I gave you how to do it.

if you are a casual or part of a pug group - you are going to get wiped by any organized group with a clue. that's how it works.

Tankqull · September 2015

staying out of their reach spamming bombard+caltrops while pulling them through narrowings with stacked mines and scorched earths - unbelievable how dump most zerglings are

.

twistedmonk · September 2015

Tankqull wrote: »

staying out of their reach spamming bombard+caltrops while pulling them through narrowings with stacked mines and scorched earths - unbelievable how dump most zerglings are .

right...but that's a pug zerg.

not an organized group that have been PvPing as a group for the past 1.5 years...

Tankqull · September 2015

twistedmonk wrote: »

Tankqull wrote: »

staying out of their reach spamming bombard+caltrops while pulling them through narrowings with stacked mines and scorched earths - unbelievable how dump most zerglings are .

right...but that's a pug zerg.

not an organized group that have been PvPing as a group for the past 1.5 years...

even those get blood in their eyes when they see a "vulnurable" prey and do the wierdest things...

Sykotical · September 2015

I still say turn on friendly fire. If you want to stack aoe attacks, then make sure they're ranged. Impulse and Whirlwind should decimate zergs from within.

Second to that, I'd vote for proximity based aoe damage reduction to simulate friendlies carefully avoiding each other.

themdogesbite · September 2015

twistedmonk wrote: »

i don't know...

does your group coordinate barrier + warhorn and save all your ultimates for the initial push.... are you on teamspeak to coordinate all this...

pretty sure our group of 15 never lost to steel tornado spammers...like ever...

bad groups are bad...

OP is a part of a more then capable PvP guild with lots of strong players, they are aware of how to play.

Mr_Nobody · September 2015

Remove or rework Purge ~

Blobs are gone ~

cschwingeb14_ESO · September 2015

Purge is just the start. Get rid of the idea that support skills (even alliance support skills) with a high target cap are ever going to be a good idea.

The heals/etc are already smart heals. Why should 1 guy be able to purge/barrier/vigor/etc more than 6 people? All damage abilities outside of siege have a 6-person cap, with no secondary effects and 1/2 damage or less for more than 6 targets. And ZOS has been on rooting out abilities over that cap as often as they can. Why should some heals not have a cap of 6 when others do?

themdogesbite · September 2015

Mr_Nobody wrote: »

Remove or rework Purge ~

Blobs are gone ~

As long as turteling is as beneficial as it is then people will continute to blob up. Lots of people called it early on and yet devs didnt listen, many of the people that defended a 6 man cap on dmg skills hopefully wised up now atleast..

I mean this is super intresting and challenging PvP isnt it.. atleast they knew that turteling was a ridiculous way of exploiting the AoE cap..

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0hyK9tLzG5o

Leandor · September 2015

Luckily IC has several Zones. My way of fighting them is to leave arena district for a while.

Kas · September 2015

Leandor wrote: »

Luckily IC has several Zones. My way of fighting them is to leave arena district for a while.

Works fine for me (solo or with 1-3 others) in IC as well. Sunday though, we had enough of doing the same thing over and over again and many people in the guild looking to do something together. Thus we wanted to play some oldschool pvp and take some keeps (and I was #1 on AD boards so might have been beneficial ^^) . A much bigger group of reds had the same idea. Not being able to turn keeps, having to split up to annoy them, etc. All that would have been fine and what was known from 1.6.

But when it came to fight, what used to work when fighting an uphill battle felt mostly like it was gone. Don't get me wrong, there are big groups in IC as well and there are some that reliyheavily on steeltornado. You can fight them just well. But fighting this group of 40+ in outside Cyrodiil was different from both, IC and 2.0.

I don't really know if the server lag gone (and turned into fps drops for about 50% of our guild, especially those with the newest hardware) played a role. But imo it was also about the changes to block and dodge. But I can't tell for sure. Might as well have been about so many people in our group having fps drops and other not having worked on equip.

Leandor · September 2015

I think the main problem in Cyrodiil proper is (only conjecture, I have not been there at all since IC dropped) that seemingly the damage taken from siege gets reduced by battle spirit. Thus, Siege weaponry is back at the completely useless state it was before they finally increased it.

eliisra · September 2015

Leandor wrote: »

I think the main problem in Cyrodiil proper is (only conjecture, I have not been there at all since IC dropped) that seemingly the damage taken from siege gets reduced by battle spirit. Thus, Siege weaponry is back at the completely useless state it was before they finally increased it.

Not sure how siege helps the smaller group, it never did in the past. The side with the zerg always had way more siege, entire lines of them + healers protecting the siege. They also had purge bots and infinite Barrier. The smaller force could at best afford to send like one sneaky guy to place siege, that ended up ganked by a dozen NB's with 100% armor pen. RIP 1.6.

Siege was helpful for pug zergs trying to wipe a organized and stacked raid. Was good for that purpose.

But that's not the type of fights the OP is describing or struggling with. He or she wants to go up 15v40 and have a chance, like in the past.

It's definitely much harder to take on bigger groups now. I've noticed. In the past you could be little sneaky, than push in and burst them down simultaneously, with a smaller force. No longer possible due to Battle Spirit. You cant really out sustain them either, since mobility and kiting is harder + they have more heals. Block is screwed and dodge unavailable half the time. Than that new awful snare stacking that removes the last bit of mobility you had, regardless of how much you're hitting Purge, Rapid or trying to dodge, still perma stuck in quicksand with 30+ players AoE spamming you.

Leandor · September 2015

eliisra wrote: »

Leandor wrote: »

I think the main problem in Cyrodiil proper is (only conjecture, I have not been there at all since IC dropped) that seemingly the damage taken from siege gets reduced by battle spirit. Thus, Siege weaponry is back at the completely useless state it was before they finally increased it.

Not sure how siege helps the smaller group, it never did in the past. The side with the zerg always had way more siege, entire lines of them + healers protecting the siege. They also had purge bots and infinite Barrier. The smaller force could at best afford to send like one sneaky guy to place siege, that ended up ganked by a dozen NB's with 100% armor pen. RIP 1.6.

Siege was helpful for pug zergs trying to wipe a organized and stacked raid. Was good for that purpose.

I respectfully disagree. We often used siege weaponry quite successful in defending locations or objects from much larger groups. It is a matter of how you use them and how willing you are to waste one for getting off a single well timed shot at an opposing group.

As I said, I have not played Cyrodiil landscape PvP since IC hit, so maybe I am wrong on that, but if the damage is unchanged, I can see them be a very very valuable tool in fighting blobs of any flavour.