Rapid Maneuvers: This ability and its morphs will no longer provide immunity to snares or immobilizes.
Retreating Maneuvers: This morph will no longer remove current snares or immobilizes, and will instead grant affected allies a bonus that reduces their damage taken from behind by 15%.

Developer Comment:
Spoiler

If they're going to take away the ability to shake off roots and snares then they need to make root and snare abilities NOT be spammable. What utter nonsense is this? Others can spam abilities and that's ok but we're going to take away your ability to counter? Really?

frostz417 wrote: »

Turelus wrote: »

I am actually surprised it took thing long TBH.

I guess ball groups need more purge spam now.

Yes. Let’s punish ball groups for farming zerglings because they can’t fight back due to their lack of skill and coordination... welcome to the age where being a good player gets you punished while being rewarded for being trash

I wonder how many ball groups with no self-awareness don't realize they are the zerg.

It's a good change. Small to medium groups usually are built to handle their own mobility, so they don't run it. Large groups running a rapids spammer have no business trying to run away from anybody except other large groups also running with rapids spammer, so this doesn't change much. What it will change, however, are large groups currently being chased by the same amount of pugs around a keep, only to turn around and kill them with a destro ult bomb because nobody could outrun them. They will now have to deal with snares, immobilizations and having to slot a mobility skill just like everybody else. And that should make fights a little bit more even and fun.

This should also make keep defenses a little bit more interesting, as it is way too easy for any moderately skilled group to just push through a heavily defended breach with a couple barriers to pop and spamming rapids and purge.

Then let’s have snare/immobilize removal get added to the psijic skill.

Mag characters already get only 1 activation of rapid maneuvers out of their entire stam resource bar, and have needed that snare removal/immunity to get out of range of the lone snare-dagger thrown by the npc.

So, if we are going to get dismounted because that one frakking dagger slows us down to keep us getting snared over and over, at least add the snare removal to that psijic skill line so we can still keep our irritation to a minimal boil.

frostz417 wrote: »

You don’t see anything problematic about everyone being able to relentlessly spam snares and roots without any cooldown or draw back constantly rooting opponents down especially since almost every spammable is a snare?

Not at all its part of the game and is part of what makes combat interesting. The current problem is that it is trival for a large group to ignore that entire aspect of combact. I'm glad they are fixing it.

Small scale speed got nerfed to the ground last patch which many believe was warranted, opinions aside on that matter. People have adapted to not having speed, people have adapted to having less duration on snare removal.
The moment expedition was nerfed in Murkmire, rapid maneuvers was instantly pointed at as it did not receive any changes and remained one of the most overpowered skills in the game.
This change is good and I am all for it. Small scalers are self reliant on their movement via expedition and snare removal, I see no reason why ball groups cannot be as well.

itscompton wrote: »

frostz417 wrote: »

Turelus wrote: »

I am actually surprised it took thing long TBH.

I guess ball groups need more purge spam now.

Yes. Let’s punish ball groups for farming zerglings because they can’t fight back due to their lack of skill and coordination... welcome to the age where being a good player gets you punished while being rewarded for being trash

LOL, standing in a ball group getting massive heals and killing people by timinig ulti dumps doesn't make you a "good" player, if you need to be in a ball group to do well in PvP I'd have other ideas about who the "trash" player actually is in that scenario.

TIL there is literally an addon that indicates when party members' ULTs go up...

As a solo player who likes to help out with the campaign by participating in keep fights, ball groups (and the ever worsening lag) are maybe the only things that are pushing me closer and closer to quitting.

Fighting long drawn out keep fights can be really intense and fun both on the attacking side and the defending side, but as soon as a ball group shows up, most of the time it just feels like it's game over.

Currently, there is literally no counterplay to them (before anyone mentions Negate, without anything to keep the group in said Negate they just move out of it). Everything ZoS has added over the years to try combat tightly packed players (stuff like Proxy det, AoE snares and roots) has ultimately just added more strength to the ball group arsenal with Rapids totally negating the CC option. Even stacking siege often isn't effective enough to kill them.

It's gotten to the point where many players, often including myself, just abandon defending/attacking the keep since attempting to fight them yields nothing, wastes time and significantly affects the already poor performance. Even ZoS have tried to discourage this by famously asking players to "Spread out more" to reduce lag.

This is why this change to Rapids was justified and needed, and as many have pointed, most groups will be able to adapt, but at least now snaring ball groups will be an option.

As a final side note to those saying that this change and nerfing ball groups in general is bad for the game (which I've already attempted to refute above), imagine what this is like from the perspective of an entirely new player to PvP: You join Cyrodiil for the first time and find yourself defending a keep that a ball group enters. You then proceed to get wiped over and over again, while the performance is awful. What incentive is there for that player to ever come back to Cyrodiil if that's the reality of sieges as a 'zergling' or 'potato', as they are so often dismissed as?

That turns new players away from Cyrodiil, which is bad for the game.

another 'fix' to a skill that wasn't broken to begin with.