My take on current "meta" issues on PvP

ManDraKE · July 2016

Little Disclaimer: This is all my opinion. I'm open to debate, suggestions and all kind of critisim, but please avoid commets that don't add anything to the discussion. I know that there are plenty of topics about this things, but most of them are just a flamewar.

- Poisions: This things are a pain in the ass. 60% cost increase is way too much, and in a fight where there is several people hitting you, you are pretty much with a posion on you all the time, is a random (but almost granted) proc that can completely cripple a player, this kind of things are bad for PvP in general. We need some way of mitigate the effects, maybe add some resistance to posion effects on Tick skined or something like that. Also a nerf to the cost increase posions in much needed, 60% is INSANE.

- Radiant Destruction: if the target is not on execute range, the beam should break. Imo the main problem with this ability is not the dmg output or the un-doggeable nature of it, the problem is that you can have it on you all the time during a fight, and as soon as you get into execute range you get instant vaporized, is like playing with 25% less health. With other executes you have a chance of avoiding the execute (block, heal, whatever), and that opens the room for skillful play, being able of predict combos to avoid getting executed is a really important part of being good at PvP. All the executes require the target to be in execute range in order to be effective, and with a good reason, a well timed execute can be more powerful than an ultimate, but RD is the only execute in the game that dosn't follow that. Don't nerfed it into the ground, but a change as i suggested will put an skill factor to it, in that way the execute will be still be powerful and useful, but it won't be an spammeable-braindead friendly skill.

- Malubeth: the beam procs too much, channeled attacks like jabs or rapid strikes makes it almost a 100% uptime while being hit, a cooldown is needed. Also the healing bonus stacking on Major Mending is way too much. I'm not 100% sold on change it to a Major Mending/Vitality bonus as people suggested, but something needs to be done.

- Health debuffs: I like the idea of having support builds that debuffs the enemy, but there should be a cap of some kind. Correct me if i'm wrong, but right now there is not limit on how much you healing can be debuffed, is possible to make builds that can healh debuff targets for over 100%. Add some kind of cap to it, something similar to critical resistence: there is a limit in how much critical damage you can mitigate stacking impen and such, implement something like that for health debuffs.

There are many other balance issues, bugs, etc with abilities, sets and stuff, but i wanted to keep it sort to focus on things that affects the meta of the game. And sorry for my bad english, i'm still working on it ^^

Taleof2Cities · July 2016

Poisons and Radiant Destruction are both purgeable ... but I don't know why this is rarely mentioned in the various OP threads scattered across the forums.

Efficient purge is a very underrated skill for stam users ... slot it on your back bar and stop the nerf requests.

ManDraKE · July 2016

Taleof2Cities wrote: »

Poisons and Radiant Destruction are both purgeable ... but I don't know why this is rarely mentioned in the various OP threads scattered across the forums.

Efficient purge is a very underrated skill for stam users ... slot it on your back bar and stop the nerf requests.

Not all classes can purge as templars, and even if you run efficent purge, you can use it once, maybe twice withouth running out of magika, but the posions proc on you all the time, as soon as you purge it, it procs again. Having a counter it dosn't equals to be balanced.

I tried running efficent purge, it din't change anything, it was only a magika sink because i was under posion effect all the time anyway, plus there is not clear indication that the posion that affects resources in on you, all have the same visual effect. Efficent purge is useful for some situations, but for this case in particular is irrelevant

NBrookus · July 2016

Poisons are a counter to the levels of regen you can run in CP campaigns.
Radiant Destruction counters shuffle/well-fitted/permarollers. Not very well, but better than a channeled staff attack.
Malubeth counters the insane levels of burst damage and makes tanky play more possible. (Although if it is still bugged -- and think there's enough evidence to suggest it is -- it needs to be fixed.)
Health debuffs counter the huge heals from BoL, Vigor + Rally, etc.

They are all bandaids to underlying issues, IMO, but none of them are without consequences for the wearer or without counters of their own. They aren't the problem by themselves.

Taleof2Cities · July 2016

Well, you aren't the only member of the group you know ... other players can slot it to remove additional effects. You mention Templars where Magicka Templars (including myself) often slot Cleanse instead for the additional effect removal and heal.

Do you have a video that shows "pretty much with a poison being on you all the time"? With the 20% proc chance, I'm not seeing that being done to me even in large battles ... where more members of your group are additional targets for a poison proc.

Sorry, but there isn't a poison imbalance issue in my opinion ... and other forum-goers have posted the same.

ManDraKE · July 2016

NBrookus wrote: »

Poisons are a counter to the levels of regen you can run in CP campaigns.

No it dosn't, because if you have low regen, you get *** even harder. And ofc it destroys non-cp campain.

NBrookus wrote: »

Radiant Destruction counters shuffle/well-fitted/permarollers.

My change dosn't affect that, RD will be still able to hit during dodge-roll and be very effective vs those kind of builds. And btw, if that is your idea of a counter, let me tell you that is a reall bad one.

NBrookus wrote: »

Malubeth counters the insane levels of burst damage and makes tanky play more possible. (Although if it is still bugged -- and think there's enough evidence to suggest it is -- it needs to be fixed.).

Not really, i can burst you on 3 hits on an stamblade withouth giving too much you chance to proc malubeth. Try to fight a malubeth user with a templar and you will see why is broken. Malubeth is only beneficial to burst meta because now i can run a glass-cannon build and let malubeth do his thing to keep me alive. Malubeth only makes the burst meta even worse.

NBrookus wrote: »

Health debuffs counter the huge heals from BoL, Vigor + Rally, etc..

Read again, i never said that health debuffs are bad, they are just out of control.

NBrookus wrote: »

They are all bandaids to underlying issues, IMO, but none of them are without consequences for the wearer or without counters of their own. They aren't the problem by themselves.

Yes, and no. I agree that are a lot of underlying issues that lead to this kind of problems, but we all know that soft caps are not comming back, so we have to try to find the best possible solution that dosn't involve a huge change on the game.

ManDraKE · July 2016

Taleof2Cities wrote: »

Well, you aren't the only member of the group you know ... other players can slot it to remove additional effects. You mention Templars where Magicka Templars (including myself) often slot Cleanse instead for the additional effect removal and heal.

Do you have a video that shows "pretty much with a poison being on you all the time"? With the 20% proc chance, I'm not seeing that being done to me even in large battles ... where more members of your group are additional targets for a poison proc.

Sorry, but there isn't a poison imbalance issue in my opinion ... and other forum-goers have posted the same.

Do you really need a video? i don't record myself while playing (my computer is not that good) but is something that you can test by yourselft really easily: take 2 friends with posion, fight them and you will see how you literaly have 0 resources all the time, even using efficent purge. 20% in every la/ha/weapon skill is pretty much 100% uptime outside the coldown

Having healers in your group is a good counter, but i want to be able to PvP withouth having a healer babysitting me all the time, there are other forms of pvp besides big group play.

Taleof2Cities · July 2016

That's exactly why I'm looking for a video ...

Since poisons came with the Dark Brotherhood, I've rarely experienced a zero resource issue or dying (as a direct effect of poisons) even in small group PvP.

I can think of three conclusions for your specific situation:

1. Your statement that "you literally have 0 resources all the time" is exaggerated or overblown.
2. Your PvP small group frequently takes on enemy groups that are disproportionately larger in numbers.
3. Your build needs some fine tuning for better resource management (e.g champ point redistribution, better equipment, or using the Serpent or Atronach mundus stone).

GreenSoup2HoT · July 2016

- Health debuffs: I like the idea of having support builds that debuffs the enemy, but there should be a cap of some kind. Correct me if i'm wrong, but right now there is not limit on how much you healing can be debuffed, is possible to make builds that can healh debuff targets for over 100%. Add some kind of cap to it, something similar to critical resistence: there is a limit in how much critical damage you can mitigate stacking impen and such, implement something like that for health debuffs.

Healing Debuff's are multiplicative not additive. Sure if you total all the healing debuff's in specific healing debuff builds you can reach over 100%, however when the math is done is it not 100%. You do not ever heal for 0.

You also need to remember healing can also offset these mass healing debuff builds. You can easily stack healing percentages way higher then healing debuff percentages.

Add some kind of cap to it, something similar to critical resistance: there is a limit in how much critical damage you can mitigate stacking impen and such

There is no critical resistance cap. I've now been told 3300 is the impen cap, however i'm not entirely sure since you can build past a 1.5x crit damage multiplier. I'll have to find the patch notes with the information. The info below will just show the maximum critical resistance possible even if there is a cap or not.

-8 impen (250x8=2000, 2000/66=30.3%)
-25% CP crit damage reduction
-Transmutation Set (1304 critical resistance , 1304/66=19.75%)
-Armour of the Construct (20% critical damage resistance)

Maximum Theoretical Critical Damage Resistance = 94.8%

(Theoretical because Armour of the Construct i believe does not come in CP rank 160. It drops from Veteran Crypt of Hearts dungeon. I'm unaware if it does drop in CP 160 though since i don't PvE much. There for im saying Theoretical because im unsure if this set is obtainable in an end game level, it is obtainable but its low level.)

You can also stack Critical Damage very high.

-18.3% Shadow Mundus (7 divines)
-25% CP critical damage increase
-Nightblade Hemorrhage Passive (10%+ critical damage)
-Archers Mind (15%+ increased critical damage from stealth / 5%+ not in stealth)
-50%+ for standard critical damage

Maximum Critical Damage 118.3% in stealth / 108.3% out of stealth (Archers Mind) [ Not including Base 100% ]

(If there is any other Critical Damage set i may have left out let me know.)

So as you can see, there is no limit to how much critical resistance you can stack (theres a resist cap) because critical damage can out stack it. There IS however a limit to when critical resistance is deemed worthless against players who do not have enough critical damage. You cannot mitigate someones critical hits to less then 1.0X damage (less then none critical hits). Which means, if you have more critical resistance then someone has critical damage, you will loose out on your potenail critical resistance. Technically its still possible to have more critical resistance then the cap and loose out on the extra resistance you have.

Most the time, players only have 1.5X or 1.6X (Nightblades) critical damage. Which means you need 3300 (1.5x) or 3960 (1.6x) critical resistance to negate ALL of the average players critical resistance. This is why having 7 impen (1750=26.5%) is very good in pvp because you most likely will get full value out of your critical resistance. All thats left is 25% into your CP tree to negate the average users critical damage, however it's unlikely this will happen because most players will also have points into their own critical damage modifier as well.

Hopefully this helps!

ManDraKE · July 2016

Taleof2Cities wrote: »

That's exactly why I'm looking for a video ...

Since poisons came with the Dark Brotherhood, I've rarely experienced a zero resource issue or dying (as a direct effect of poisons) even in small group PvP.

I can think of three conclusions for your specific situation:

1. Your statement that "you literally have 0 resources all the time" is exaggerated or overblown.
2. Your PvP small group frequently takes on enemy groups that are disproportionately larger in numbers.
3. Your build needs some fine tuning for better resource management (e.g champ point redistribution, better equipment, or using the Serpent or Atronach mundus stone).

1. Not really, you constantly run out of resources when posion proc is on you. Onces your resources are low, and posions are on you, is really hard to get resouces back at that point because the 60% cost increase will always overshadow your regen.
2. Yes and no, a common scenario when posions are OP is a 2vs1 for example, if the battle goes for more than a few seconds, posions will cripple you
3. A high regen build helps a bit, but it dosn't solve the problem. Plus you are kind force to run a high regen build, or die. Before posions you could run a low-regen build if you knew how to handle your resources, now that is out of question

Let me give a new perspective to this problem:

Do you have to build your character around countering weapon enchanments? No, so why should i build around countering poisons? That is the clear example why they are OP right now.

ManDraKE · July 2016

@GreenSoup2HoT great info man, thanks.

With my analogy beetwen critical resistences and health debuff i was trying to make reference to exactly this:

There IS however a limit to when critical resistance is deemed worthless against players who do not have enough critical damage. You cannot mitigate someones critical hits to less then 1.0X damage (less then none critical hits). Which means, if you have more critical resistance then someone has critical damage, you will loose out on your potenail critical resistance.

Put a system in place that prevents (or produce some kind of diminishing returns effect) the "stack all the health debuff sources of the game" build.

juhasman · July 2016

Taleof2Cities wrote: »

Poisons and Radiant Destruction are both purgeable ... but I don't know why this is rarely mentioned in the various OP threads scattered across the forums.

Efficient purge is a very underrated skill for stam users ... slot it on your back bar and stop the nerf requests.

Efficient purge cost too much comparing to the number of effects it cleanse. 2 negative effects? It's nothing. There are skills which put 2-3 negative effects with 1 use and can be spammed and this refreshing their effects. 1 person can put on You 5 or more negative effects in 2 seconds, so You would need to spam efficient purge all the time and also if You have more then2 effects mostly You'll cleanse not right one.Only true usefull cleanse now is templar class purge. Efficient purge could be changed to cleanse 4 negative effects from user and 2 from nearby allies.

juhasman · July 2016

@GreenSoup2HoT i think there is cap for crit resist. I dont remember which patch notes excatly but they showed calculations for it. 1st impenetrable lowers only base value of crit which is 50%. Cap on impen is Your lv*50 so if You're lv 50 and 160 cp+ it's 66*50= 3300. Can be wrong but I think it was that way.

kendellking_chaosb14_ESO · July 2016

Taleof2Cities wrote: »

Poisons and Radiant Destruction are both purgeable ... but I don't know why this is rarely mentioned in the various OP threads scattered across the forums.

Efficient purge is a very underrated skill for stam users ... slot it on your back bar and stop the nerf requests.

I ran Efficient Purge till the nerfed it for stamina by raising the cost by 1k it used to cost nearly the same as cloak now it's unusable if you have any magic buffs purge eats too much magic.

NBrookus wrote: »

Poisons are a counter to the levels of regen you can run in CP campaigns.
Radiant Destruction counters shuffle/well-fitted/permarollers. Not very well, but better than a channeled staff attack.
Malubeth counters the insane levels of burst damage and makes tanky play more possible. (Although if it is still bugged -- and think there's enough evidence to suggest it is -- it needs to be fixed.)
Health debuffs counter the huge heals from BoL, Vigor + Rally, etc.

They are all bandaids to underlying issues, IMO, but none of them are without consequences for the wearer or without counters of their own. They aren't the problem by themselves.

Poison is a min/max super recovery counter that cripples all non min/max races. If you had crazy recovery then it doesn't hurt you if your recovery is normal it's a free kill. Burst is not and has never been a problem player push everything to magic or stamina with little to no points in health, little to no armor.

Basically canon builds that cry when they get two shooted. Running around with next no defense but want to be mad when you die to a canon that drops you in .4 seconds.

GreenSoup2HoT · July 2016

juhasman wrote: »

@GreenSoup2HoT i think there is cap for crit resist. I dont remember which patch notes excatly but they showed calculations for it. 1st impenetrable lowers only base value of crit which is 50%. Cap on impen is Your lv*50 so if You're lv 50 and 160 cp+ it's 66*50= 3300. Can be wrong but I think it was that way.

You may be right. I'm not to sure, in my opinion it would make sense if there was or was not a cap. Either way is justify-able.

AJ_1988 · July 2016

My take on pvp is that the big guilds are pathetic and don't realise it's objective based pvp. They would rather try and prove they are the best by farming Ap while being backdoored because they have no concept on the purpose certain keeps provide.

Pvp is run too much by Tri alliance guilds and had become too much of who can farm the most Ap, who can exploit into keeps the most and who can spam one button the fastest. Gone are the days of good old keep sieged and battles. The buffs for having home keeps doesn't mean anything anymore. Faction loyalty died along time ago and because everyone feels the need to be part of these farming/bully guilds other campaigns are dead or are a farming campaign for imperial city.

I've been trying for months to get people to switch campaigns from 2 alliances to stop the third controlling a low pop one that they have the numbers on but people don't seem to want a less laggy and less BS campaign they would rather complain about the lag and Lag causing zergs in the over populated one.

ManDraKE · July 2016

AJ_1988 wrote: »

My take on pvp is that the big guilds are pathetic and don't realise it's objective based pvp. They would rather try and prove they are the best by farming Ap while being backdoored because they have no concept on the purpose certain keeps provide.

Pvp is run too much by Tri alliance guilds and had become too much of who can farm the most Ap, who can exploit into keeps the most and who can spam one button the fastest. Gone are the days of good old keep sieged and battles. The buffs for having home keeps doesn't mean anything anymore. Faction loyalty died along time ago and because everyone feels the need to be part of these farming/bully guilds other campaigns are dead or are a farming campaign for imperial city.

I've been trying for months to get people to switch campaigns from 2 alliances to stop the third controlling a low pop one that they have the numbers on but people don't seem to want a less laggy and less BS campaign they would rather complain about the lag and Lag causing zergs in the over populated one.

that is a complete diferent topic.....

Forestd16b14_ESO · July 2016

Um poisons are purgable like yes cleanse is bugged to either not heal or heal allies or what ever it is but still it removes the poisons.

ManDraKE · July 2016

Forestd16b14_ESO wrote: »

Um poisons are purgable like yes cleanse is bugged to either not heal or heal allies or what ever it is but still it removes the poisons.

as soon as you clean the poison, you are poisoned again, and cleanse skills are really expensive, even for magika builds.

Joy_Division · July 2016

ManDraKE wrote: »

Taleof2Cities wrote: »

Poisons and Radiant Destruction are both purgeable ... but I don't know why this is rarely mentioned in the various OP threads scattered across the forums.

Efficient purge is a very underrated skill for stam users ... slot it on your back bar and stop the nerf requests.

Not all classes can purge as templars, and even if you run efficent purge, you can use it once, maybe twice withouth running out of magika, but the posions proc on you all the time, as soon as you purge it, it procs again. Having a counter it dosn't equals to be balanced.

I tried running efficent purge, it din't change anything, it was only a magika sink because i was under posion effect all the time anyway, plus there is not clear indication that the posion that affects resources in on you, all have the same visual effect. Efficent purge is useful for some situations, but for this case in particular is irrelevant

Stam user can only use eficeint purge once or twice and that's unfair.

Magicka users can only dodge twice or three times and that's proper balance.

K, sure. Maybe if you didn't invest 100% of your resources into stamina, maybe you'd have more magicka to purge. I got to run out there with 17K stam on a magicka build and be mindful of my stam regen, how about you do the same and stop asking for nerfs?

R7KT · July 2016

What about reducing the battle spirit 50% damage reduction to how it was in 1.6, more and more players are hitting the CP cap, and a lot of people already have damage mitigation from hardy and elemental defender. The only way to kill people now is by bursting them.

Lexxypwns · July 2016

Taleof2Cities wrote: »

Poisons and Radiant Destruction are both purgeable ... but I don't know why this is rarely mentioned in the various OP threads scattered across the forums.

Efficient purge is a very underrated skill for stam users ... slot it on your back bar and stop the nerf requests.

This, just so much this

Efficient purge is a must have for most non-templar builds in game right now, it just has such great utility and passively increases mag regen by 10% just for slotting it.

IxSTALKERxI · July 2016

Purge is bugged. It prioritises the first 6 plyaers in the group and all the rest miss out. You can't have a group larger than 6 people or the rest will die to heal debuff's, poisons, siege etc. Unless they are all templars, all slot their own purge or can reliably get a purify synergy.

There are so many things that are bugged and aren't getting fixed, I don't see what the problem is. Things like:

- Purge not correctly prioritising targets
- Jewlery enchants that don't decrease the potion cool down lower than 45 seconds.
- Willows path not taking drinks into consideration
- Being hit by single target abilities while in Clouding Swarm
- Malubeth being slightly overpowered in the current meta
- Skills like GDB being made useless from battlespirit
- Movement speed overall is slower.
- Large healing debuffs as a result of fasallas, root spam, negates making other ground ultimate's not worth running.

Some of these things seem like they would be pretty straight forward, I don't know why we have to wait 6 to 12 months for them to be fixed.

Honestly I'd be happy to see half these things on the patch notes for this upcoming patch. The fact that not one of these things are fixed this patch does my head in.

RoamingRiverElk · July 2016

Like Juhasman said, Efficient Purge really should purge more than 2 effects. Being marked already puts 3 effects on you, it's ridiculous. In my opinion, purge should remove every single negative effect from the caster, and then a certain number from the others.

FearlessOne_2014 · July 2016

ManDraKE wrote: »

Little Disclaimer: This is all my opinion. I'm open to debate, suggestions and all kind of critisim, but please avoid commets that don't add anything to the discussion. I know that there are plenty of topics about this things, but most of them are just a flamewar.

- Poisions: This things are a pain in the ass. 60% cost increase is way too much, and in a fight where there is several people hitting you, you are pretty much with a posion on you all the time, is a random (but almost granted) proc that can completely cripple a player, this kind of things are bad for PvP in general. We need some way of mitigate the effects, maybe add some resistance to posion effects on Tick skined or something like that. Also a nerf to the cost increase posions in much needed, 60% is INSANE.

- Radiant Destruction: if the target is not on execute range, the beam should break. Imo the main problem with this ability is not the dmg output or the un-doggeable nature of it, the problem is that you can have it on you all the time during a fight, and as soon as you get into execute range you get instant vaporized, is like playing with 25% less health. With other executes you have a chance of avoiding the execute (block, heal, whatever), and that opens the room for skillful play, being able of predict combos to avoid getting executed is a really important part of being good at PvP. All the executes require the target to be in execute range in order to be effective, and with a good reason, a well timed execute can be more powerful than an ultimate, but RD is the only execute in the game that dosn't follow that. Don't nerfed it into the ground, but a change as i suggested will put an skill factor to it, in that way the execute will be still be powerful and useful, but it won't be an spammeable-braindead friendly skill.

- Malubeth: the beam procs too much, channeled attacks like jabs or rapid strikes makes it almost a 100% uptime while being hit, a cooldown is needed. Also the healing bonus stacking on Major Mending is way too much. I'm not 100% sold on change it to a Major Mending/Vitality bonus as people suggested, but something needs to be done.

- Health debuffs: I like the idea of having support builds that debuffs the enemy, but there should be a cap of some kind. Correct me if i'm wrong, but right now there is not limit on how much you healing can be debuffed, is possible to make builds that can healh debuff targets for over 100%. Add some kind of cap to it, something similar to critical resistence: there is a limit in how much critical damage you can mitigate stacking impen and such, implement something like that for health debuffs.

There are many other balance issues, bugs, etc with abilities, sets and stuff, but i wanted to keep it sort to focus on things that affects the meta of the game. And sorry for my bad english, i'm still working on it ^^

A.) Poisons are basically ZOS's way of preforming "Checks and Balance" with the Champion system. But solves very little because everyone can use them including the players that have the high CPs. No nerfs needing here it's the CP system which needs "heavy" nerfs in my Opinion.

B.) Yes you can't nerf Radiant Destruction without nerfing or just getting rid of "Major/Minor Evasion" from the game. Also reevaluating how much dodge rolling players that are playing stamina builds can needs to be address. In my Opinion "Major/Minor Evasion" is way more OP then Radiant Destruction which somewhat counter's the (Evade and Dodge Rolling) beyond broken high burst damage builds. Shuffle and "near perma-dodge rolling builds" also in my opinion offers less skilled gameplay then Radiant Destruction.

C.) Yes it is popular belief that this monster set is broken. However in my opinion this set is more of a problem because we have seen a HUGE increase to the amount of players using broken and skill less 2 secs gank builds that have no counter except Malubeth atm. This in my opinion is the result of the "Arms Race" in Cyrodiil questionable players look for more and easier ways to kill players from Stealth (damn near close to no counters).

Then you have the victims of circumstance who don't want to just (Near Instantly Die out of No Way). So these people are now forced into a play style that equivalent to building fortresses since the gank builds just knock down house like no other, fortresses have become one of the few viable play styles in Cyrodiil.

In my opinion ZOS would have to make Armor from "Light all the way up to Heavy" viable again. Cause right now there are a few questionable gankers who will kill you with CC within 2 to 3 secs no matter how much armor you have on you are basically dead before you can even break the CC. (Yet funny how this issue is not even being brought up at all.) So the end result is you'll get a bunch of people abusing the Malubeth set.(I'd put most of the fault on the gankers, and the out of control Arms Race that ZOS has turned Cyrodiil into.)

D.) In my opinion I do not think health debuffs should be nerfed at all. I think they are doing a decent job at their purpose and inducing a counter to "Super High HPS healing builds". I honestly don't think you can stack up that much health debuff. I've never notice it being much of a problem on my Magplar, Mageblade, StamKnight, or Stamblade. Unless people are using "The Program That Shall Not Be Named" again to change the vaules of the effect of the abilities Heal Debuff vaules. Which is more then likely what you are seeing in this case maybe other cases too. In this day and age you never know with ZOS'es, stance to protect the identities of convicted script kiddies and hackers.

Again all of this is my opinion, and I am also open for discussion on these major points as well.