AoE Cap - Lord Fengrush hits it on the head

timidobserver · October 2015

I'll offer my Templar perspective since no one on the panel mains a Templar.

Smart heals:
I do not run ball groups. Most of my groups have a max of 4-8 people in it. I think Fengrush is pretty wrong on smart healing. Basically, you guys with your stam build coordinated dps do enough single target damage that absolutely nobody is going to survive it other than maybe a full turtle DK, and you are going to just perma lock the DK and hammer them until they go down. The CP system doesn't help us out at all with your damage, like it does with magical/elemental damage, so we just have to take it to the face. How else am I supposed to keep my team alive if I can't get a heal off as soon as I see you guys spamming your wrecking blows and surprise attacks.

Basically, everyone on the panel is bias because you are all damage focused players, so you want people to just take your damage and die. That is the goal of every one of your builds. You have no Templar or primary support player on your panel, so they don't get their view out there.

AoE Cap:
I agree completely. Remove it. The fact that someone is in a large group should not afford them automatic damage reduction.

Dynamic Ulti Gen:
Maybe I am bias because I've been here since beta. So, I remember perma bats when the game launched. That was the worst state of the game since it launched. I do not want a return to that. If they can make dynamic ult work without going back to perma bats, I'd be okay with it, otherwise no.

Purge:
I agree completely. Cap it at 4 or something.

Templar:
Get someone that mains a Templar and/or support on your panel. For example, Akinos, Blabafat, DivineCross, BananaSquad_ Hellseesyou(EU player)

Imperial City Dying: This problem would be solved if they just add more stuff to the IC vendors for the Orsinium update. They should just refresh the vendors with new stuff every update.

Kupoking · October 2015

As far is purge is concerned, I prefer the way purity/purifying ritual works. in terms of mechanics.

Nijjion · October 2015

Perfectly said... Daoc never needed damage/target caps and that had bigger zergs than eso ever had.

PBpsy · October 2015

The removal of dynamic ulti generation was the absolutely worst decision they have made since launch both in terms of PVP and PVE. It was obvious since the "lowering the inequality" speech a year ago and it still obvious now..For me it was the thing that marked the end of ESO as a game and the beginning of ESO as a comedy show.

Jitterbug · October 2015

PBpsy wrote: »

ESO as a comedy show.

The One Where Joey Needs To Farm 150 Mats To Make A New Hat

Hiero_Glyph · October 2015

Smart healing is another huge problem. Normally in most MMos the healer is a skilled class where it balances healing with aggro. Overhealing can easily draw too much aggro and lead to a wipe. Underhealing can lead to players having to go defensive or getting killed and either extend the time to clear, which causes other issues, or to player death, which can lead to a wipe. In ESO, smart healing is basically unskilled healing. You often want to heal a target but cannot due to how the system works. The only thing you can do is spam heals and eventually the intended target will be healed. Healing Ward and Breath of Life come to mind in regards to how this system fails, especially when the heal goes to someone not even in your group. Shield Breaker only complicates skills like Healing Ward as well.

Compared to skills like Blessing of Restoration/Combat Prayer where you actually have to position yourself and heal players in a specific area and simply spamming doesn't work. If all heals required a target, target area, or AoE effect then healing would become skillful and larger groups would need to be organized in terms of how heals were applied. Additionally, if heals had a heal cap and divided the heal by all affected players in the target area with bonuses granted based on the severity of the injury you would actually need to be smart about how/when players are healed. No more instantly healing the player with the lowest health within 28m of the caster. Instead you would have to target the player/area where healing is needed and calculate how much healing is required in order to cover the damage taken. Skill slike Vigor/Blood Altar/Regeneration might actually be needed just to reduce to amount of healing given to those taking less damage.

AoE caps are a major part of this issue but smart healing is right behind it in terms of rewarding unskilled play.

PBpsy · October 2015

Jitterbug wrote: »

PBpsy wrote: »

ESO as a comedy show.

The One Where Joey Needs To Farm 150 Mats To Make A New Hat

Yep, mostly slapstick humor.

WarrioroftheWind_ESO · October 2015

Aren't siege weapons subject to the same 50% dmg taken nerf? So whereas a nice solid round of siege could annihilate a zergball back in the day, now it just tickles especially when you have groups running nothing but healers and everyone having access to self heals of some form. Make battle spirit work only with player damage and have guards and siege able to do their full damage. There's just no consequence to running in a ball anymore with anti-zerg abilities either hitting like a wet noodle or working to the complete opposite of that purpose.

and bring back ground oil. Add a little platform or something for the person to stand on then go to town with it. If people die to it, then don't stand in stupid.

Personofsecrets · October 2015

@Sypher ,

Just like with PVP, PVE is poisoned by the notion that other players are doing well due to their champion point levels.

Also, as a player that runs with those who have 500, 600, and 700 champion points, it sucks to play with them and feel like I'm not contributing as much because of my relatively low CP level.

Personofsecrets · October 2015

@FENGRUSH ,

I think that the ramping up of experience at certain points could lead to issues where players wont be able to catch up to those who already have quite a bit CP.

What matters the most is that players can easily catch up and that the cap is in place to prevent those who already have tons of CP from being over powered. From that perspective, it doesn't matter how little post-cap champion points cost.

Personofsecrets · October 2015

@FENGRUSH

GreenSoup2HoT · October 2015

I would much rather all abilities have a AOE cap including Barrier and Purge. This way there is no 450k shield damage a small group has to burn through.

(different story on console. bigger player base of 1vX/casual player's. Very rarely do you see coordinated large group's who pop ult's like barrier/ Templar heal's and stack crown. )

After hearing Fengrush discuss this more with me on his stream, his reasoning is good. I wouldn't be opposed to removing the AoE cap or my suggestion.

Muizer · October 2015

@Personofsecrets Somehow I think you're in the wrong thread. This isn't about CP at all.

Ernest145 · October 2015

Zheg wrote: »

Fully agree that healing should be harder and require positioning rather than just spamming breath of life.

Fully agree that aoe caps need work. I believe ZOS originally said full removal would impede performance, though I'm not sure if that still holds true given that they're now doing calcs to halve and quarter damage after the initial 6 people are hit.

Fully agree the 50% damage mitigation is just bonkers, and indicative of awful combat design. If you need to mitigate the damage that much in pvp, your original numbers were wrong to begin with.

Fully disagree with the underlying tone that the pvp mechanics should be catered to a 4 man sized group. GW2 had 4-man spvp instances, but it also had full wvw because that's where large-scale fighting with large-scale groups is supposed to occur. Cyrodiil is supposed to be large groups fighting each other, not a bunch of small mans. I certainly appreciate the lack of an arena where solo or small groups can fight each other - I'd love for that to be added. For regular Cyrodiil though, a 4-man squad should not be able to take a keep. Period.

The game should reward the group that can take ~20 people and coordinate. There are too many youtube egos who bemoan pvp groups that aren't even at the full group size the game allows and yet have never tried to coordinate that many. It's no easy task. I can promise you it's harder than running solo, and harder than running a 4 man. To clarify, this does not mean I'm advocating the size of the blue group on Azuras, the gigantic yellow blobs on TF on sunday/tuesday/thursday, or the red zerg for that matter. But the mechanics of Cyrodiil should indeed favor groups - just trying to coordinate enough people to be on at the same time can be difficult. I'd like to see some of the youtube egos actually lead a 20 man group in Cyrodiil during prime-time against a veteran pvp guild. I've solo wiped a group of 10 trying to take a keep before, but that should be the exception, not the norm. /soapboxrant.

You are completely wrong running solo and in a small man is much more difficult than running with a full raid, I've done all three. There is no need to reward people for stacking with 20+ and spamming aoe's and rolling over people because it requires little risk. Sure the raid leader needs to be somewhat aware of what is happening and also know what he/she is doing but still it doesn't compare to leading a small group without having 5+ healers spamming heals and everyone using barrier. People in the group literally don't need to have any skill, just stack their weapon/spell damage and the healers heal, spam 3 abilities and know how to hug the leaders butt. Also, large groups already have the numbers so they can easily wipe the small groups if they know what they are doing, what he wants is for small groups to have a chance at wiping larger numbers which is very difficult because of these aoe caps and the way healing is. Even if a group of 10 can wipe 50 that is completely fine if they are a very solid group, the 50 already have them outnumbered but if they are bad then they should wipe.

UltimaJoe777 · October 2015

Ya'll do realize that no matter how much they try to cater to what ya'll want ya'll will always want more right? Therefore Zenimax simply draws the line at what they feel is needed and what they don't. If they feel any of what ya'll cry for is needed they will act upon it otherwise they won't. If anything in this thread (cba to watch the vid) has been an issue to ya'll for years and has not been changed then no doubt it will never be changed.

SleepyTroll · October 2015

Rylana wrote: »

Fengrush, I agree that zerg busting should be a thing. A 5-10 man group should have a reasonable chance of getting kills, in some cases many kills on much larger groups.

I have started leaning towards the removal but I have a major reservation.

Imagine a non aoe capped Haxus, Vehemence, GoS, KHole or a similar sub-raid sized coordinated group. a 12-16 man solid group that can already bust a 40+ man zergball. Now remove the AoE caps. What have you just created? You literally just made a high damage small-medium man bomb group completely unbeatable, and at the same time even if those groups meet up vs each other, its a damage war, whoever has the most DPS would then win every fight. Forget healing and movement, boom boom kapow.

There are only two guilds in the game right now that on even numbers footing even gives GoS a challenge (and no I am not claiming we are the best, I am simply stating the current state of the game for us) and that is VE (DC) and Rage(AD). This is generally speaking of course, and there are other smaller groups and conglomerates like Khole and Tertiary Meat that if they had up to 15-20 guys probably would be able to take us on fairly well.

My point in this is that besides those named, the only time we ever lose a fight, is when we are outnumbered 2 or 3 to 1 or even more. But we SHOULD lose those fights, or at least barely eke out a win via superior strategy and movement.

If you removed AoE caps, those 50-60 man zergballs that are REQUIRED to beat us, would be completely useless. What you would see is basically the top six or seven 12-20 man organized groups basically rendering the entire rest of the population null and just slamming each other with as much damage as they can stack.

Now imagine your four man squad running into one of those 16 man high DPS groups. You might think four people would bust them, but the reality is youre going to be running 4 equal footing into 16 equal footing in a game where burst DPS has been nerfed so hard for PvP that youre basically ensuring the death of smallman. Its already in a bad enough state. This potentially makes it actually worse, considering the truly organized groups already out there.

The real issue in this game is how damage stacking benefits by force multiplication. Why have one prox det when you can have 10 all at once. Nothing will survive that. Only takes 10. Thats not a very large group.

Your second to last paragraph doesn't make any sense at all. Here's why: right now 4 people vs 16, the 4 people hit 6 of the 16 for full damage and the rest at 50%. The 16 hit the 4 for full damage. If cap was removed then the 4 and 16 would all get hit for full damage.... So how again does the removal of AOE caps make it worse for the 4 group?

Muizer · October 2015

Well...............I was listening to these guys and I cannot help but feel that it's a congregation of really good players who are frustrated by the fact they get beaten by large groups of unskilled players. I think they'd like to nerf the zerg just enough to allow them to go 1v X again like in the old days. I mean, people , you do realise that all this "lift AoE cap" is in that kind of territory, right? Meaning it might allow a very small group of min-maxing PvP gods to occasionally shine sufficiently for a nice ego-flattering video while the rest of us still gets zerged down as always.

I'm not questioning any of the problems that are identified btw. But to think lifting AoE caps will help break the pattern? It's at best unimaginative.

Joy_Division · October 2015

I can not believe there is actually a debate about this. To all you AOE cap advocates. We have seen your "solution" in place for a year and a half and it doesn't work. You had your chance. You were and are wrong. Step aside gracefully.

There is only one possible reservation and that was brought up by @Rylana. It does take about 40 pugs in a disorganized blob to have a chance at taking out a coordinated raid. If you lift caps, I can understand the fear that since now those 40 will be taking full damage and the smaller 16-20 organized raids might be unbeatable.

But, I do not think that is how things will happen because:

These disorganized mobs are *not* benefiting from the AoE cap very much precisely because of the fact they are disorganized. They do not stack on crown; in fact they tend to disperse when focused, thus leaving the poor brave souls or those suckers still playing a DK to get steamrolled without having AoE cap protection.
When I play alone, I hardly *ever* derive the benefit of an AoE cap damage mitigation. I am almost *always* competing against it whenever I run into Rage or Vehemence or these very groups that you fear will be made more powerful. That disparity is more than absurd, that is ***. I absolutely cannot fathom the logic that somehow that cap is reigning in the power of these raids and making it more "fair" for me. No it is not. It is doing precisely the opposite. The only scenario where I would derive the same advantage of these stack on crown groups is if I sought out to ball together with other allies, which is precisely the sort of play we supposedly want to discourage, not to mention very unreliable given the tendency for Pugs to disperse.
When I raid, I am almost *always* benefiting from AoE cap mitigation. It is so important for survival there are mods out solely dedicated to making it easy to stack on crown. This isn't new. Here is the defining strategy as articulated from my old PvP guildmaster back in June 2014: "Get your ass to the crown, stack inside of my character model, and burn everything you have." The guilds you fear will in fact be losing what is in essence a monopoly on the AoE cap advantage, because the disorganized mobs lack the cohesion and smaller groups lack the numbers to similarly take advantage.

In sum, the benefits of removing AoE caps for offensive abilities by the stack of crown raids will be less than the current benefits that they alone derive for AoE caps. The only times they will see an appreciable boost to their steel tornadoes and prox dets is when they go against another stack on crown raid. Maybe one will actually be thinking of ways so as to spread out to ensure that only their opponents take all that damage.

If I turn out to be wrong, I do not care. Call me out on it. It is clear as day the current state of affairs with the AoE encourages the very type of play that we are trying to do away with and is a nightmare to compete against. The status quo absolutely sucks.

FENGRUSH · October 2015

Theres a lot of posts to respond to here - and I plan to very much... gonna stream now, already posted in the other thread. Great conversation though, will reply to all later!

SirDopey · October 2015

sagitter wrote: »

I agree for aoe cap, but sorry I disagree for old ulti regen, it was so broken, especially with the dk battle roar passive, a dk could have infinite resources 1 vs x, and it is so discouraging that 4 of better players can t remember about how broken it was.

That's because they were mostly all DK's who want to be able to solo zergs again......

rfennell_ESO · October 2015

The main issue has been and will be barriers and purge.

Too strong, and in organized groups that stack them and cycle them... way too powerful.

Darnathian · October 2015

SleepyTroll wrote: »

Rylana wrote: »

Fengrush, I agree that zerg busting should be a thing. A 5-10 man group should have a reasonable chance of getting kills, in some cases many kills on much larger groups.

I have started leaning towards the removal but I have a major reservation.

Imagine a non aoe capped Haxus, Vehemence, GoS, KHole or a similar sub-raid sized coordinated group. a 12-16 man solid group that can already bust a 40+ man zergball. Now remove the AoE caps. What have you just created? You literally just made a high damage small-medium man bomb group completely unbeatable, and at the same time even if those groups meet up vs each other, its a damage war, whoever has the most DPS would then win every fight. Forget healing and movement, boom boom kapow.

There are only two guilds in the game right now that on even numbers footing even gives GoS a challenge (and no I am not claiming we are the best, I am simply stating the current state of the game for us) and that is VE (DC) and Rage(AD). This is generally speaking of course, and there are other smaller groups and conglomerates like Khole and Tertiary Meat that if they had up to 15-20 guys probably would be able to take us on fairly well.

My point in this is that besides those named, the only time we ever lose a fight, is when we are outnumbered 2 or 3 to 1 or even more. But we SHOULD lose those fights, or at least barely eke out a win via superior strategy and movement.

If you removed AoE caps, those 50-60 man zergballs that are REQUIRED to beat us, would be completely useless. What you would see is basically the top six or seven 12-20 man organized groups basically rendering the entire rest of the population null and just slamming each other with as much damage as they can stack.

Now imagine your four man squad running into one of those 16 man high DPS groups. You might think four people would bust them, but the reality is youre going to be running 4 equal footing into 16 equal footing in a game where burst DPS has been nerfed so hard for PvP that youre basically ensuring the death of smallman. Its already in a bad enough state. This potentially makes it actually worse, considering the truly organized groups already out there.

The real issue in this game is how damage stacking benefits by force multiplication. Why have one prox det when you can have 10 all at once. Nothing will survive that. Only takes 10. Thats not a very large group.

Your second to last paragraph doesn't make any sense at all. Here's why: right now 4 people vs 16, the 4 people hit 6 of the 16 for full damage and the rest at 50%. The 16 hit the 4 for full damage. If cap was removed then the 4 and 16 would all get hit for full damage.... So how again does the removal of AOE caps make it worse for the 4 group?

Why cater to 4 customers instead of catering to 24 customers that came to this game for large scale PVP and not elitists?

k2blader · October 2015

They need to fix the CP power gap before they worry about AoE issues.

Also he was the least likable on the panel for me. lol

usmcjdking · October 2015

Cyrodiil is comprised mostly of casuals. Dudes who wear green & blue armor and probably don't even know what a weapon enchantment is. These "AoE caps" and "smart healing" are not catering to casuals anymore than they are catering to the elite. The casuals just prefer to use these mechanics to their advantage whilst the elite whine and moan about how they don't benefit from it because they choose not to utilize them.

aco5712 · October 2015

if you are just a random casual who doesnt know game mechanics or how to use your class properly, why should you get this massive crutch? Why should you award incompetence? Go learn how to play your class, alot of players are willing to share builds and help you. Improve yourself.

The crutch should come from having 23 other people around you healing you and picking up some of your dps because your using light attacks. The crutch shouldnt be that you take 50% less damage because you have billy, suzie and bob all standing closer to the opposing player.

briandivisionb16_ESO · October 2015

Rylana wrote: »

Imagine a non aoe capped Haxus, Vehemence, GoS, KHole or a similar sub-raid sized coordinated group.

Imagine removing the AOE cap and bombgroups have to think and play with equal skill.

Korah_Eaglecry · October 2015

OtarTheMad wrote: »

Definitely agree with what you guys said about PVP. Fengrush at 59 minutes summed it up.

I mainly PVP, you could call me a casual if you want... I am not going to care but when I am trying to defend a keep or in IC sewers and we have 30+ PvEers just zerging through casting barriers and purging everything under the sun it becomes discouraging. I remember having 4-6 oils dropping on this group that was sieging a front door and it did absolutely nothing... it was like I was dropping water to get them all wet.

I fought most of you guys as AD, Fengrush often times comes into Haderus sewers and it's fun. I hate it when AD PvEers run away, lol, so frustrating. @Fengrush, not sure if you remember but we had a pretty fun fight on my NB yesterday I believe or Friday night (Mithllon Vules) and you died from the banner guard agro I dragged with me. Then you killed me later, lol, fun fights. My skills are rusty because of the lack of good small combat but it's always fun.

Hopefully ZOS listens to you guys and this game can go on for a long time.

Im sorry but blaming other players obviously PvPing on PvEers (who detest PvP) for zerg balls is exactly why you should probably go play another game.

Zergs is how PvP in this game works. IC might have been meant to be a smaller enviroment. But it doesnt prevent the group sizes...So if ZOS intended smaller PvP. They should of just went with 4v4 Arenas.

But I still cant stop laughing at how terrible at PvP you are for you to blame zerging on PvEers...How absolutely bad you must be.

Alucardo · October 2015

Please fix obvious spelling error in title. It's FENGRUSH, not Fengrush.

Respect.

rfennell_ESO · October 2015

The question that needs to be asked is not "should my gank group be able to kill 24 players at a time". That's obviously what someone thinks should be possible and the basis of the line of reasoning presented. This game had AOE uncapped and behavior was identical with stacked raids spamming aoes, on top of that it had overpowered defensive builds that could aoe kill masses of people.

There does need to be a limit on how much damage you can do with an aoe or we return to that nonsense, and it was total nonsense.

The uncapped Aoe argument is mostly about taking out casual zergs.. it's not going to do squat to the organized pvp zerg balls that cycle barrier and have 6+ healers spamming away. You can see that some believe they ought be able to take out 20+ players solo or in a small group, but that's mostly a "I want to be able to for me ego" thing and would be terrible for the game. If you make max group size 24 players, people that can will get 24 players. They aren't going to stop because the Fengrush bomb group killed them, the only argument for it is that fengrush gets to farm AP off casuals better.

The issue is twofold:

The fact that large groups get AP that makes it worth zerging is part one of the problem.

The fact that large groups cycling barriers and spam healing themselves is part two with a little dash of why does the alliance war skill line have nothing but abilities that affect all allies? This covers the problem of barrier, purge, retreating maneuvers which scale infinitely in power in relation to how many allies are near you.

They touch on the barrier issue, but then digress to an "aoe caps need removing" refrain when they already touched on the fact that aoe caps need to increased to cover MORE than they currently do (precisely barrier, purge and retreating maneuvers)

If you de-incentivize the benefit to zerging by reducing AP gained coupled with max caps on alliance war abilities... you both weaken the strength of and limit the attraction of zerg balling.

The most ridiculous fact is that the zergball groups only grow stronger with the removal of the AE cap as proposed. The only chance you have is catching them all looking at their maps at the same time if you are the smaller zerg buster group.

I think there are a multitude of ways to make zergballs less attractive that don't get any attention. Like stealth, should a group of 24 be able to stealth and lie in waiting somewhere? I get single stealth, I get small skirmish group stealth... but the 24 players all stacked on each other stealth I don't really get. AP gains as mass unit is another way. Reduction of the power of alliance war abilities on allies is another.

As a final point I'd say the biggest issue is shields. Particularly barrier. The fact you can't crit them rises even further out of the muck when you deal with cycling of barriers. If you have enough health and enough barriers, it takes a massive coordination of ae to even threaten people that run in that fashion. The fact that you see these zergball group all running around with healing ward bubbles and then cycled barriers shows the nature of the problem, that nature being that it's nearly impossible to take them down when everything is up. The only way is with another zerg ball, and that's how the problem exasperates itself.

Hiero_Glyph · October 2015

@rfennell_ESO

If that zerg runs into a group of 8 players then only 2 players in that smaller group benefit from the AoE cap versus almost all from the larger group.. AoE cap protect larger groups! It's simple math, where only 6 targets take full damage and afterwards the damage is reduced for each additional target. How does removing this help larger groups? By making those 2 additional targets take full damage? Sorry, I'd rather the 20+ player zerg take full damage instead of only the first 6.

If you think removing AoE caps will someone benefit the zerg then you really don't understand how the system works since they would be taking over 25% more damage for a group of 12 versus 12.5% for the 8 player group. This value increases the larger the zerg is while it remains mostly unchanged for small groups.

Lastly, skilled players tend not to zerg. If they do it is to acomplish a goal because they recognize the drawbacks of running with 10+ players. A skilled group should win by the numbers but they also get less reward for their effort, there is no need to handicap it further. Just give skilled players the opportunity to defeat larger groups of unskilled players without protecting them just based on numbers. Skill should matter!

EDIT: Healing and barriers are a related issue but they need to be solved in a different manner.