31.5% Siege Damage Increase on Vivec

NBrookus · July 2018

Glory wrote: »

I also like both of your ideas, siege "health" decreasing over time in your inventory (at a slower rate but similar to how it decays on the battlefield) sounds like a healthy solution so you can't walk around with pockets full of trebuchets.

I was spitballing and didn't even think about a siege expiration mechanic already existing.

Sounds like a very do-able fix and works with their desire to make resources more important again. Protecting the resource behind you while you siege becomes strategic.

But the siege merchants probably need to get a lot less squishy or they'll get ganked.

@ZOS_BrianWheeler Is this something you would consider to make resources more important?

maxjapank · July 2018

Raising the AP cost of siege is not the way to go. I want to encourage new players to participate, even if it’s only through siege. And newer players don’t usually have tons of AP to spend.

Twohothardware · July 2018

maxjapank wrote: »

Raising the AP cost of siege is not the way to go. I want to encourage new players to participate, even if it’s only through siege. And newer players don’t usually have tons of AP to spend.

We definitely do not need to increase the cost of Siege. If anything Siege and Camps should be part of the random reward packages so that more people get involved because for those that only PvP occasionally you don't want to have to constantly spend the AP you're trying to get for other things just to buy Siege, Repair materials, Rams, Camps, ect.

Taking Keeps should be Epic long Battles that go on for over an hour instead of these stupid Keep flips we have now where a Zerg takes it in <10 minutes because whichever side has more numbers wins since you don't have enough Siege and Camps among all the players to constantly mount a strong defense.

maxjapank · July 2018

Twohothardware wrote: »

Taking Keeps should be Epic long Battles that go on for over an hour instead of these stupid Keep flips we have now where a Zerg takes it in <10 minutes because whichever side has more numbers wins since you don't have enough Siege and Camps among all the players to constantly mount a strong defense.

Since Summerset, taking keeps have become harder to take (as it should). It is often impossible to enter through one breach. And I have seen some fights go on for 30 minutes+. Even longer sometimes. I'm not sure what you are experiencing because it's definitely not the cake walk it used to be before Summerset.

Tetter · July 2018

To the one who asked earlier.. bloodthirsty does increase damage from siege to walls so I don't see why it wouldn't be the same for people.

Anazasi · July 2018

Oh please this is getting out of hand. So now you have to actually consider your sets, comp, and strategy on groups and taking keeps. Maybe this will help.

CP that reduces siege damage.
Thick skinned 100pts = 25% or 72pts = 23%
Hardy 100pts = 15% or 75pts= 14% ( I wouldn't put more than 16 pts in this though)
Elemental Defender 100pts = 15% or 75pts = 14%

If you look at thick skinned and elemental defender they can mitigate most of the siege damage types you take conservatively by 37%.

Now if you are using blade cloak well that's another 25%
If you are under a siege shield well that's another 35%
If you are wearing Bastion of the Heartland Set thats 25%
If you are in a circle of protection that's 8%
If you are wearing a set that offers major protection well that's 30%
If you happen to have chosen Nord well that's another 9% i think from the racial passive.
Armor mitigation has 0 impact on siege damage (not sure if anyone new that or not)
Penetration value has 0 impact on siege damage (not sure if anyone new that or not)
Racial passive now have a small impact on specific damage types but not on siege damage (pretty sure on this one but I should actually test it to verify)
Seriously you want to play in world pvp you need to be aware of what you can do to mitigate damage. It's time they make siege effective on CP campaigns.

Siege is suppose to hurt it's siege for gosh sakes.

FYI you can effectively gain 37%+25%+35% (97% although i believe its called diminishing returns on damage so you can never completely remove siege damage. But you can take 23k per second and reduce it to 6k per second), by simply slotting 2 abilities and adjusting your CP and you don't even have to equip siege sets unless you intend on standing in red.

templesus · July 2018

I’m fine with all the damage buff to siege etc as long as ZOS codes it into the game that you can’t siege people you outnumber.
There is no excuse for me being in a 4 man group fighting 10+ to get sieges by multiple people. ZOS with this damage buff is literally is trying to eliminate small scale PvP from the game.

Kadoozy · July 2018

I wonder if fire buffs from dk and dark elf stack onto siege. That might be something worth testing

IxSTALKERxI · July 2018

Kadoozy wrote: »

I wonder if fire buffs from dk and dark elf stack onto siege. That might be something worth testing

Siege damage does not get increased by DK or Dark elf passives. It does not get increased by any CP either.

This was nerfed 1-2 years ago during the last time that siege was over buffed. It is one of the reasons Fixate was such an OP emperor back in wabbajack, his dk passive abilities buffed his emperor ground oils (emp siege damage bonus no longer works against players either) so they did ridiculous damage. (Also you generated ultimate off damage done to etc so banners for days).

Siege damage does however have a low chance to proc the burning status effect, which does get buffed by the newly changed DK passive and can crit.

Anazasi wrote: »

FYI you can effectively gain 37%+25%+35% (97% although i believe its called diminishing returns on damage so you can never completely remove siege damage. But you can take 23k per second and reduce it to 6k per second), by simply slotting 2 abilities and adjusting your CP and you don't even have to equip siege sets unless you intend on standing in red.

The damage mitigation % are multiplicative, not additive which give it this 'diminishing returns' effect you are referring to.

As an example your numbers should look something like this:

0.63 x 0.75 x 0.65

But yeah, people already allocate their CP to mitigate siege damage. This CP damage allocation is the only reason siege damage hits harder in No CP campaigns compared to CP campains. (This is the part that makes me wonder if someone with 0 CP in vivec will get hit 31.5% harder than in Sotha Sil.)

The main issue is Scattershot and Meatbag catapaults. Their ground effects don't get mitigated by the siege shields. The ground effect stacks. This results in 10 lingering effects being stacked on the ground in a key location like a breach which can make it mathematically impossible to get inside because of the amount of damage stacked. The damage buff that scattershot gives is also extremely powerful and at the moment is making the difference between dieing to oils or taking a bath.

My preferred solution to balancing siege would be to have siege damage ignore defensive champion points - this would put it on par with the no CP campaign more 'cleanly' without having any complications balance wise. In addition to this, nerf scattershot + meatbag catapaults. Perhaps reduce the duration of the effect, slightly decrease the damage of scattershot or limit the amount of stacks you can have in 1 area.

Another final point, in the past over buffing siege damage has been bad for balance, as generally speaking the more people you have, the more siege you can set up. If you only have 6 people they'll be busy using player abiltities, you won't have any spare players to setup siege. Whereas if the enemy has 10 players, 6 of them can engage the 6 in combat while the other 4 setup 1 meatbag and 3 scattershots. If the 6 outnumbered players go to focus the scattershot operator, they can simply cloak away and reappear on the other side of the fight thanks to swift and place down 2 new scattershot catapults. It ends up like a game of whack-a-mole lol.

Anazasi · July 2018

i have been testing siege shields and they do mitigate catapult damage. The issue is the dot is 8 seconds and will tick every second but the damage is reduced inside a siege shield.

IZZEFlameLash · July 2018

Sigh... this game just gets 'better and better'. Between OP sets to OP sieges... I guess 5pc Vicious Death + 5pc Siege Engine meta is a go. Middle finger to any group plays and siege outcome will almost always on the defender side now.

SodanTok · July 2018

As it stands now, defending keep is ridiculously easy and cheap (setting up all catapults and aiming them at the door) but so is getting to the fully defended keep through just one hole where everything is aimed at all if your group just stacks enough rapids, healing and gores.

Both things are bad. Both things should get more difficult.

Bergzorn · July 2018

IZZEFlameLash wrote: »

Sigh... this game just gets 'better and better'. Between OP sets to OP sieges... I guess 5pc Vicious Death + 5pc Siege Engine meta is a go. Middle finger to any group plays and siege outcome will almost always on the defender side now.

It's also easy for the attackers to siege the flags once the inner is breached. That is what usually happens now, everybody is sieging and the few brave souls who try to push in or out just melt away. It's *** stale IMO.

I'm not generally opposed to the catapult changes and can't really comment on CP PvP, but the present state needs tweaking.

Swiss_roll · July 2018

Glory wrote: »

TL;DR: If siege is going to be extremely potent and dangerous, it should have real costs (either to carry, set up, or purchase) to balance out their extreme damage output.

There's nothing more frustrating to be already fighting against the odds than to see a person in the distance laying down a meatbag and a scattershot. Sometimes this happens in a keep, sometimes it's literally in an open field that warrants no siege usage.

There is nothing skillful or rewarding about being able to lay down a siege that does ridiculous damage (and also has basically no inventory cost and costs nothing to buy).

If they're going to keep making siege into what is apparently an "I win" mechanic, particularly for when you are outnumbering someone, that's fine. But they need to attach REAL costs to placing a siege down, as they currently are:
Ridiculously easy to set up and stack multiples of anywhere in Cyrodiil

Basically free

Embarrassingly easy to carry hundreds of

Easy to cast then jump off of to do other things (like operate 3 at a time...)

Unless the original intent and design of siege weaponry is to drop twenty down everywhere you go because they have basically no down-side, we need some changes to how siege mechanics work.

I think there is a very valid place for siege: large battles for keeps and resources. You should have to think to yourself "man, this fight using a scattershot is worth the cost of setting it up and potentially losing it." Currently it's "eh, this siege costs 2000 AP and is sure to one shot somebody so why not drop 6."

With the sheer amount of AP laying in people's banks, I don't have a great solution for cost (as increasing cost would affect some more than others). However, it feels extremely wrong for people to be able to carry around 200+ essentially free 1-shot mechanics in their inventory that can be placed anywhere in massive quantities.

Glory wrote: »

Following up from my previous post, I think the changes to siege damage are set in stone and unavoidable.

However, my suggestions to attaching a real cost to make people think before they lay 20 down...

Relatively random order:
Significantly increase time to lay down a siege (5 seconds, 10 seconds? shouldn't be 2 seconds to place a huge trebuchet)

Significantly increase cost (10k AP per siege? would affect newer players more than others, unless new currency introduced)

Increase carry "weight" (e.g. each ballista takes 2 spaces, trebs 3, rams 4, etc.)

If we're talking "realism" as so many people in this thread believe is fine ("siege in real life one shots you so this should too") then adding a weighted debuff (not a real suggestion as people would hate it, but seriously, real life != this game's mechanics)

I agreed with Glory's opinion.

Every skills should have pros and cons.
Thinking about player skills, devastating skills usually have higher cost.
Why only siege engines should be super casual to use and doing devastating damage ?

I like to suggest a few costs of siege engines.

From "realism" aspect, siege engines should have longer cool down than now. You can't spam siege engines within few secs in rl.

Also, thinking about "weight", 1 idea is restrict the numbers of siege engines which 1 player can carry like 1 each.
Or if we don't like that, then adding a movement speed reduction debuff depends on how many sieges they are carrying like 0.5% per siege ( so 1 Swift jewelry = 20 siege engines).

TequilaFire · July 2018

Swiss_roll wrote: »

Glory wrote: »

TL;DR: If siege is going to be extremely potent and dangerous, it should have real costs (either to carry, set up, or purchase) to balance out their extreme damage output.

There's nothing more frustrating to be already fighting against the odds than to see a person in the distance laying down a meatbag and a scattershot. Sometimes this happens in a keep, sometimes it's literally in an open field that warrants no siege usage.

There is nothing skillful or rewarding about being able to lay down a siege that does ridiculous damage (and also has basically no inventory cost and costs nothing to buy).

If they're going to keep making siege into what is apparently an "I win" mechanic, particularly for when you are outnumbering someone, that's fine. But they need to attach REAL costs to placing a siege down, as they currently are:
Ridiculously easy to set up and stack multiples of anywhere in Cyrodiil

Basically free

Embarrassingly easy to carry hundreds of

Easy to cast then jump off of to do other things (like operate 3 at a time...)

Unless the original intent and design of siege weaponry is to drop twenty down everywhere you go because they have basically no down-side, we need some changes to how siege mechanics work.

I think there is a very valid place for siege: large battles for keeps and resources. You should have to think to yourself "man, this fight using a scattershot is worth the cost of setting it up and potentially losing it." Currently it's "eh, this siege costs 2000 AP and is sure to one shot somebody so why not drop 6."

With the sheer amount of AP laying in people's banks, I don't have a great solution for cost (as increasing cost would affect some more than others). However, it feels extremely wrong for people to be able to carry around 200+ essentially free 1-shot mechanics in their inventory that can be placed anywhere in massive quantities.

Glory wrote: »

Following up from my previous post, I think the changes to siege damage are set in stone and unavoidable.

However, my suggestions to attaching a real cost to make people think before they lay 20 down...

Relatively random order:
Significantly increase time to lay down a siege (5 seconds, 10 seconds? shouldn't be 2 seconds to place a huge trebuchet)

Significantly increase cost (10k AP per siege? would affect newer players more than others, unless new currency introduced)

Increase carry "weight" (e.g. each ballista takes 2 spaces, trebs 3, rams 4, etc.)

If we're talking "realism" as so many people in this thread believe is fine ("siege in real life one shots you so this should too") then adding a weighted debuff (not a real suggestion as people would hate it, but seriously, real life != this game's mechanics)

I agreed with Glory's opinion.

Every skills should have pros and cons.
Thinking about player skills, devastating skills usually have higher cost.
Why only siege engines should be super casual to use and doing devastating damage ?

I like to suggest a few costs of siege engines.

From "realism" aspect, siege engines should have longer cool down than now. You can't spam siege engines within few secs in rl.

Also, thinking about "weight", 1 idea is restrict the numbers of siege engines which 1 player can carry like 1 each.
Or if we don't like that, then adding a movement speed reduction debuff depends on how many sieges they are carrying like 0.5% per siege ( so 1 Swift jewelry = 20 siege engines).

Just no, unless you add a penalty for everything else you carry.
How about simply slotting and using a siege shield?

kookster · July 2018

I think the damage increase on the non lingering dot siege would be good for CP. But to the ground AOE's.... I think thats a potentially bad idea. Though I do love watching a zerg melt trying to storm through a keep door. But I think making it stronger might be a bad idea. It may make unbreakable siege lines potentially that no one can get through. It is almost that way right now from what I have seen. I am not going to say it will do that, but it might.

Xsorus · July 2018

Siege is powerful if you’re not in a zergball, if you’re in a zergball though siege simply does nothing most of the time.

Feanor · July 2018

@Bergzorn

It promotes the ridiculous stacking even more. Not good.

Universe · July 2018

There was a need to increase the siege damage in CP enabled campaigns since siege wasn't useful enough, both against groups with dedicated healers and groups without healers.
There is no issue with this damage increase.