Proposal for fixing ball group and zerg lag

$spacefracking$ · February 2021

So, it is a theme of cyrodiil that ball groups and zergs are a problem, both gameplay-wise, and performance wise.

A potential fix would be to modify an ability like inevitable detonation in several possible ways:
- Apply (a potentially uncleansable) defile to all non-primary targets
- increase damage
- increase radius
- add heal absorption to non-primary targets

This would prevent overly dense groups from accumulating, which would positively effect both gameplay and performance.

There may be other abilities that could be modified to apply an uncleansable defile that affects players clumped with the primary target as well.

That's all. What do you all think?

ShadowProc · February 2021

spacefracking wrote: »

So, it is a theme of cyrodiil that ball groups and zergs are a problem, both gameplay-wise, and performance wise.

A potential fix would be to modify an ability like inevitable detonation in several possible ways:
- Apply (a potentially uncleansable) defile to all non-primary targets
- increase damage
- increase radius
- add heal absorption to non-primary targets

This would prevent overly dense groups from accumulating, which would positively effect both gameplay and performance.

There may be other abilities that could be modified to apply an uncleansable defile that affects players clumped with the primary target as well.

That's all. What do you all think?

Ummm. NO. Have you not played in one? Prox det is a pre damage buff that they use. Lol. More damage? Not in current state.

The skills intention was to give a tool to fight against superior numbers

The best fix would be to to not allow you to use it unless solo or small group.

Sanctum74 · February 2021

Your fix would just buff them even more since proxy and impulse are the 2 main skills they use.

Ackwalan · February 2021

Instead of having heals stack, have them refresh. That by itself would fix a lot.

relentless_turnip · February 2021

Ackwalan wrote: »

Instead of having heals stack, have them refresh. That by itself would fix a lot.

I agree 👍

vesselwiththepestle · February 2021

Ball groups don't use inevitable detonation. OP is not talking about proxy.

In my opinion it should be just easier to apply inevitable detonation in combat. Due to its cast time it often is very troublesome to apply in lag on a fast running ball group. Maybe a small buff to damage. Currently with ball group members running around in 30k health you need how many inevitable detonations to make even a dent? At least six if I had to guess. If they get cast simultaneously, so they detonate all together with the same purge.

erio · February 2021

Bombing with inev debt is pretty much the only other working counter besides being another ballgroup.

Thraben · February 2021

spacefracking wrote: »

So, it is a theme of cyrodiil that ball groups and zergs are a problem, both gameplay-wise, and performance wise.

A potential fix would be to modify an ability like inevitable detonation in several possible ways:
- 1) Apply (a potentially uncleansable) defile to all non-primary targets
- 2) increase damage
- 3) increase radius
- 4) add heal absorption to non-primary targets

That's all. What do you all think?

As glad as I am that you are not dismissing that skill outright because of ... reasons (like so many others), I have to admit that ths skill is borderline op already. Only its cast time reduces its OPness. When 6 competent Pugs are using that skill against 12 guild group members with optimized builds and comms, those 6 Pugs have already a very good chance to win (which they really should not have, balance-wise).

Here, to be more specific:

1) The strongest defile in the game is 10%. Adding this to Inevitable Detonation would not really do a thing, as you only have a short burst window to apply it, and then you have to wait for 20-or-so- seconds before your next chance comes.

2) Inevitable Detonation is the highest delayed burst damage skill in the game, beating even Ultimates like the Dawnbreaker, or the meteor.

3) It's radius is already bigger than any other significant AoE skill in the game.

4) Heal Absorbtion is quite a delicate thing: Originally, it was put on the scythe skill of the Necro, and the outcry was so great that they removed it. I'm honestly happy that they have left it at least on the Borrowed Time skill.

In short: One can leave the skill as it is; it is up to the players to equip it. And if you are a poor Stamina player, do your job and equip either Frozen Portal or Borrowed Time so that the magicka classes can concentrate on using Inevitable Detonation. If only 10% of the Pugs would do that, most groups would hardly ever leave the ressource tower, or the keep's rooftop, and you could PvP in peace.

Crash427 · February 2021

Lol wut? Innev det sucks. If I get it cast on me I just purge to set it off without even thinking about it. And if you have 6 people trying to time their burst, well you've got half a ballgroup. Might as well find some support people and go whole hog.

erio · February 2021

Crash427 wrote: »

Lol wut? Innev det sucks. If I get it cast on me I just purge to set it off without even thinking about it. And if you have 6 people trying to time their burst, well you've got half a ballgroup. Might as well find some support people and go whole hog.

me and 3 others wiped a 12 man ballgroup inseconds using inev dets

Ranger209 · February 2021

vesselwiththepestle wrote: »

Ball groups don't use inevitable detonation. OP is not talking about proxy.

In my opinion it should be just easier to apply inevitable detonation in combat. Due to its cast time it often is very troublesome to apply in lag on a fast running ball group. Maybe a small buff to damage. Currently with ball group members running around in 30k health you need how many inevitable detonations to make even a dent? At least six if I had to guess. If they get cast simultaneously, so they detonate all together with the same purge.

I think they should take inevitable det and make it instant cast, but give it an 8 second cooldown. That way both morphs revolve around the 8 second timer, one before it goes off, and one after it goes off. Giving it the 8 second cooldown would justify making it instant cast, and usable.

jhharvest · February 2021

I think the easiest solution to ball groups is to enable friendly damage.

Sahidom · February 2021

Reinstate no cross healing and keep the 12-man restriction and you'll address many pain points to ball grouping. BUT that doesn't address the over performance from proc sets within an environment without "sandbox" restraints. The current test had brought many PVE into Cyrodiil, at least to check it out, with some up and down success; you can also notice players trying to adjust to the proc restriction, where many feel their own mortality when overly challenged on the field. Ball grouping will be part of the current and future gameplay of Cyrodiil or IC; but without constraints that promote balance (loosely said since player skill is a high factor) and removes toxic elements e.g broken proc sets than you at least establish a baseline on what they want PVP experience to be like; this is also related to ball grouping when you begin to apply quality control principles to the gsmeplay.

Ranger209 · February 2021

Sahidom wrote: »

Reinstate no cross healing and keep the 12-man restriction and you'll address many pain points to ball grouping. BUT that doesn't address the over performance from proc sets within an environment without "sandbox" restraints. The current test had brought many PVE into Cyrodiil, at least to check it out, with some up and down success; you can also notice players trying to adjust to the proc restriction, where many feel their own mortality when overly challenged on the field. Ball grouping will be part of the current and future gameplay of Cyrodiil or IC; but without constraints that promote balance (loosely said since player skill is a high factor) and removes toxic elements e.g broken proc sets than you at least establish a baseline on what they want PVP experience to be like; this is also related to ball grouping when you begin to apply quality control principles to the gsmeplay.

If they were to reinstate the no cross healing they need to do it across the board. Everyone needs to have the ability to heal others or no one should have the ability to heal others. You can't give some people the ability to do so and not others. Healing is to big of a deal to handle that way. So 100% self healing only, or 100% everyone can heal others no matter what their group status is.

Sahidom · February 2021

Ranger209 wrote: »

Sahidom wrote: »

Reinstate no cross healing and keep the 12-man restriction and you'll address many pain points to ball grouping. BUT that doesn't address the over performance from proc sets within an environment without "sandbox" restraints. The current test had brought many PVE into Cyrodiil, at least to check it out, with some up and down success; you can also notice players trying to adjust to the proc restriction, where many feel their own mortality when overly challenged on the field. Ball grouping will be part of the current and future gameplay of Cyrodiil or IC; but without constraints that promote balance (loosely said since player skill is a high factor) and removes toxic elements e.g broken proc sets than you at least establish a baseline on what they want PVP experience to be like; this is also related to ball grouping when you begin to apply quality control principles to the gsmeplay.

If they were to reinstate the no cross healing they need to do it across the board. Everyone needs to have the ability to heal others or no one should have the ability to heal others. You can't give some people the ability to do so and not others. Healing is to big of a deal to handle that way. So 100% self healing only, or 100% everyone can heal others no matter what their group status is.

Sure. Its not like it'll hurt the dungeon or trial grouping. ZOS made it easier for stamina users to have access to a reliable heal; SO sure make it a blanket rule.

$spacefracking$ · February 2021

Ranger209 wrote: »

Sahidom wrote: »

Reinstate no cross healing and keep the 12-man restriction and you'll address many pain points to ball grouping. BUT that doesn't address the over performance from proc sets within an environment without "sandbox" restraints. The current test had brought many PVE into Cyrodiil, at least to check it out, with some up and down success; you can also notice players trying to adjust to the proc restriction, where many feel their own mortality when overly challenged on the field. Ball grouping will be part of the current and future gameplay of Cyrodiil or IC; but without constraints that promote balance (loosely said since player skill is a high factor) and removes toxic elements e.g broken proc sets than you at least establish a baseline on what they want PVP experience to be like; this is also related to ball grouping when you begin to apply quality control principles to the gsmeplay.

If they were to reinstate the no cross healing they need to do it across the board. Everyone needs to have the ability to heal others or no one should have the ability to heal others. You can't give some people the ability to do so and not others. Healing is to big of a deal to handle that way. So 100% self healing only, or 100% everyone can heal others no matter what their group status is.

Hmm. You know, removing all healing except for self healing *would* solve the problem. It's kind of like a nuke-it scenario, but it's the same as introducing a new meta. Also solves the problem of 3 guys wearing heavy armor and 2 handed weapons running around a tower until they can hit whichever person trying to kill them with dawnbreaker x 3. Those mechs are broken.

If someone is going to be 'immortal' or whatnot, it should be on them to do it. [snip]

[Edited to remove Baiting]

Aerenthir · February 2021

Hmm. You know, removing all healing except for self healing *would* solve the problem. It's kind of like a nuke-it scenario, but it's the same as introducing a new meta. Also solves the problem of 3 guys wearing heavy armor and 2 handed weapons running around a tower until they can hit whichever person trying to kill them with dawnbreaker x 3. Those mechs are broken.

If someone is going to be 'immortal' or whatnot, it should be on them to do it. [snip]

Removing all healing except for self healing will actually make healers useless. And there are people who actually like to play that.

Also for the 3 guys wearing heavy armor and 2 handed weapons, you are really far away from the truth if you think that they survive and wipe zerglings because they run a healer and snow treaders. They don't need a healer. Most of those "farmers" run in groups of Wardens, DKs and Necro's that have more than enough survivability and self healing.

They easily survive by cutting line of sight, and using cleanses/immunities to roots/slows. Using snow threaders makes one immune to roots, but they can't sprint, making it much easier to be caught and zerged down.

There's nothing you can do to "fix" ballgroups, because that's just organized play. No matter what ZOS do, experienced players who want to organize a group will find a way to adjust and easily farm those that aren't organized and/or experienced enough.

Only thing that people can do against ball groups is to leave them alone. They are there to farm, if you don't go to them, they will leave. They don't play for the campaign, they just want to farm AP.

Unfortunately the zerg mentality is that they must always kill everyone because they are many.

Ranger209 · February 2021

Aerenthir wrote: »

Removing all healing except for self healing will actually make healers useless. And there are people who actually like to play that.

Let me go on record saying I hope they don't have to remove cross healing, but if they do it has to be all the way. You can't make some of the healers useless, and others not useless based on whether or not they are in a group. Cyro is AvAvA not GvGvG, that's battlegrounds, or IC sewers. The question would be should the tank, dps, healer roles exist in AvAvA when they are more of a group construct. In AvAvA you can't have some alliance members be able to perform roles that others can't. It's just not right plain and simple. Either the roles need to be removed or all players need to be able to perform them inside and outside of groups.

FantasticFreddie · February 2021

Sahidom wrote: »

Reinstate no cross healing and keep the 12-man restriction and you'll address many pain points to ball grouping. BUT that doesn't address the over performance from proc sets within an environment without "sandbox" restraints. The current test had brought many PVE into Cyrodiil, at least to check it out, with some up and down success; you can also notice players trying to adjust to the proc restriction, where many feel their own mortality when overly challenged on the field. Ball grouping will be part of the current and future gameplay of Cyrodiil or IC; but without constraints that promote balance (loosely said since player skill is a high factor) and removes toxic elements e.g broken proc sets than you at least establish a baseline on what they want PVP experience to be like; this is also related to ball grouping when you begin to apply quality control principles to the gsmeplay.

No cross healing is a huge *benefit* to ball groups, as is the 12 man limit.
Most of the buffs and heals in your supports toolkit cap at 6-12 people. The 12 man limit and no heals or buffs going outside of group means that ball groups can buff and heal with maximum efficiency.

DucLIX · February 2021

People still complaining about ballgroups, that's fun, especially when they start playing like us.

Look at PC-EU, 3 guilds or 4 running together on AD side, spamming bombard and negates, glad they finally discovered how to take down groups.

But still they are complaining about our gameplay, while they do the same but with a difference: They're 50+.

Bombard is just horrible for us, you can try to purge it, but don't expect to have that "soft cc immunity", it doesn't exist with it, and zerglings knows it. It makes the fights not even pleasant to play when you got 2-3 bombard spammers in the area.

But do you see any posts of ballgroup members on the forum asking for a bombard nerf, or pugnerf? No.
Always the same people complaining, saying they just want "balance" for ballgroup while they're playing their stamina wardens (or any other stam chars btw) with 40k hp. What a joke.

Aerenthir · February 2021

DucLIX wrote: »

People still complaining about ballgroups, that's fun, especially when they start playing like us.

Look at PC-EU, 3 guilds or 4 running together on AD side, spamming bombard and negates, glad they finally discovered how to take down groups.

But still they are complaining about our gameplay, while they do the same but with a difference: They're 50+.

Bombard is just horrible for us, you can try to purge it, but don't expect to have that "soft cc immunity", it doesn't exist with it, and zerglings knows it. It makes the fights not even pleasant to play when you got 2-3 bombard spammers in the area.

But do you see any posts of ballgroup members on the forum asking for a bombard nerf, or pugnerf? No.
Always the same people complaining, saying they just want "balance" for ballgroup while they're playing their stamina wardens (or any other stam chars btw) with 40k hp. What a joke.

Sure, because ball groups don't have several stamdens to spam Whirling Blades. And never had issue with Bombard while in a ball group. Race Against Time has always been enough, even though i'm running stamina character. Maybe there'd be issues with that if you're running a ball group in No-CP, but that's a bad joke. People there are usually extremely new players or new to pvp and are paper thin. Zero fun or challenge in killing those.

Negates are issue, but to this day i don't see zergs utilizing them properly. If it's a small scale, sure they can pop Negates whenever they have to, but zergs still have no idea what they are doing.

At the end of the day people complain and want nerfed that which kills them. In my case, we die when a zerg rushes, game freezes, lags, and kicks out half the group

P.S If ZOS decides to remove ball groups, the easiest solution is to remove the Stun from Sorcs Streak. Most ball groups engage with a Sorc streaking.

NeillMcAttack · February 2021

It's funny to hear, "I die mostly because I lag", all the time. Imagine trying to balance a game that does not work?

The devs just need to prioritize performance, which can be done by limiting "smart AOE's". I'm fairy sure you could have a really good, working version of Cyro, with a max group size of 3-4, maybe 5, depends on the hour! And sadly, having to re-remove, cross healing.

Otherwise, just get used to the lag, it is here to stay!

Joy_Division · February 2021

NeillMcAttack wrote: »

It's funny to hear, "I die mostly because I lag", all the time. Imagine trying to balance a game that does not work?

The devs just need to prioritize performance, which can be done by limiting "smart AOE's". I'm fairy sure you could have a really good, working version of Cyro, with a max group size of 3-4, maybe 5, depends on the hour! And sadly, having to re-remove, cross healing.

Otherwise, just get used to the lag, it is here to stay!

You've just described Battlegrounds. If that's what you want so bad, go and que up for it and have a blast.

NeillMcAttack · February 2021

Joy_Division wrote: »

NeillMcAttack wrote: »

It's funny to hear, "I die mostly because I lag", all the time. Imagine trying to balance a game that does not work?

The devs just need to prioritize performance, which can be done by limiting "smart AOE's". I'm fairy sure you could have a really good, working version of Cyro, with a max group size of 3-4, maybe 5, depends on the hour! And sadly, having to re-remove, cross healing.

Otherwise, just get used to the lag, it is here to stay!

You've just described Battlegrounds. If that's what you want so bad, go and que up for it and have a blast.

Yea, just put 90 teams of 4, 30 on each alliance, ahem, I mean team, on a much larger map obviously, and maybe some keeps with destructible walls for us to attack and defend. We could put in mechanics like siege weapons, and other powerful weapons that spawn on the map, and maybe the ability to crown a champion of your alliance, like an emperor or something!!? And if performance worked well, that would be pretty epic, I would prob never go back to Cyro.
4head!!

jhharvest · February 2021

But I still think enabling friendly damage would make Cyro better, and let's remove smart heals while we're at it. Less incentive to run in a clusterdumb and spam AOEs. You can still have dedicated healers sitting behind the front lines and healing people, just that they'd have to actually target the heals.

Sandman929 · March 2021

jhharvest wrote: »

But I still think enabling friendly damage would make Cyro better, and let's remove smart heals while we're at it. Less incentive to run in a clusterdumb and spam AOEs. You can still have dedicated healers sitting behind the front lines and healing people, just that they'd have to actually target the heals.

The result of friendly fire would be 3 civil wars on the map. Nothing but factions killing themselves for fun.

Bucky_13 · March 2021

jhharvest wrote: »

But I still think enabling friendly damage would make Cyro better, and let's remove smart heals while we're at it. Less incentive to run in a clusterdumb and spam AOEs. You can still have dedicated healers sitting behind the front lines and healing people, just that they'd have to actually target the heals.

Probably a good idea to only have friendly fire on faction locked campaigns, since the amount of trolling in non locked campaigns would be insane.

Still, I'd love to see a test with it, it does sound fun and chaotic.

$spacefracking$ · March 2021

Bucky_13 wrote: »

jhharvest wrote: »

But I still think enabling friendly damage would make Cyro better, and let's remove smart heals while we're at it. Less incentive to run in a clusterdumb and spam AOEs. You can still have dedicated healers sitting behind the front lines and healing people, just that they'd have to actually target the heals.

Probably a good idea to only have friendly fire on faction locked campaigns, since the amount of trolling in non locked campaigns would be insane.

Still, I'd love to see a test with it, it does sound fun and chaotic.

Judging from the behavior of some people in faction locked zone chat, and various idiots who pass information to other factions, I think this would cause problems in faction locked as well. In particular, tourists from other factions who visit just to screw with an enemy faction.