Oh yeah, its another one of those threads about these things, sit back and enjoy another rant lol
Day 1 player here whos been through all of the horrific metas such as Viper / velidreth one shots, crit proc sets, sorcs with 30 second shields, wrecking blow being a thing, bash stamcro's, zergs of bombblades etc etc and I can honestly say that this is by far the very worst by a long shot.
Deathmatch only- Literally no one asked for it. The reason was over players treating all modes like a deathmatch? Let them. The teams that do that usually lose and it retains the variation. Im honestly still at a loss for why removing all other modes would do anything but kill interest in BGs, and fast.
- Flag and land grab games split the teams up to other areas of the arena, making all fights varied as different people would go to different objectives which kept it mixed up. Deathmatch only just sees all teams stack in the middle being pinballed around by Dark Convergence and essentially the team with the most DC sets + healers will always win (See screenshot)
- It has killed the fast pace of Battlegrounds (again, screenshot) because now all teams know they are getting deathmatch when they que in, so all teams just take 1 or 2 healers and build tanky. With the previous and varied playlist, any game mode was possible which meant this line up wasnt optimal, and stopped that forward preparation to an extend, keeping it chaotic and unexpected.
- Its 100% stale, already, after just one week. The variety of players I have personally seen in BGs has plummeted big time. Sure we can all agree that it was nice to see a deathmatch after a bunch of capture the relic games but deathmatch all of the time is just boring.
Dark convergence- I know many people saw the 3 new proc sets (DC, Hrothgars chill, and plaguebreak) as game breaking, but Dark convergence is just on another level to the other 2. Now that Hrothgars has been nerfed, and also fixed (I think) its fast becoming another irrelevant proc set which doesnt alter balance. Plaguebreak is situational - pretty much only good vs a zerg and not Xv1,which I think most can agree is fine. Dark convergence on the other hand is actually
Better as part of a zerg. I see the proposed nerf to it with the damage and honestly say that you could straight up remove the damage altogether and it would still be game breaking in more than a few ways ;
- The concept of damage scaling like proximity detonation for more people inside is cool, but the ridiculous pull in just eliminates all need for any positioning, aiming, skill in general with (almost) no drawback. Players can just blindfold themselves and throw an AOE into a zerg and que that Simpsons meme of Martin "Im helping" as they CC a whole crowd of people with the group pull. Again, even without the damage at all, pvp has just turned into a battle of the pinball where the second anyone is out of CC immunity, they get snatched into another DC proc because they are actually everywhere.
- The drawback of this set ; It offers only a 1 second stun (Thank god, right?) No, its actually a terrible thing because it means players dont have to CC break when they are pulled in, they just step / roll to the side without needing to break free, with a free CC immunity to carry on fighting... But wait, if thats such a drawback then what is the rant for?? It means that no one dies because no stun combos are possible when everyone on both sides are immune to CC from constantly being pulled into DC from all angles, resulting in a huge stalemate game of pinball. Sure this changes when a ball group coordinates ultimates into one spot - This woks very well for my guild with a bunch of colossus etc following the DC proc, but did we really need to buff ball groups? For the most part its just seen most of cyro / the BG arena covered in DC procs all over the place.
- Get pulled > dodgeroll > heal up > reapply buffs > drop own DC > get pulled > repeat is basically the flow of most fights in cyro and BGs now.
The screenshot
This game I was using DC on a magcro with Sithis, Domi, New moon front, and potentates back bar. For the survivability and the DC cheese - its pretty much the perfect build right now, with my healer friend in there too. We won the game because we simply 'did it better' but all teams had the exact same strategy. Stack the middle, drop ults on dark convergence and hope for the best. barely anything was single target or player focussed here, it was like grinding skyreach and just throwing AOEs down until eventually getting a kill. This is what BGs have become now - A tanky dark convergence filled clash where all 12 players stack the middle and take turns pinballing each other around with this stupid set until someone doesnt move out of the middle of one of the procs fast enough (presumably because they fell asleep) and someone gets a kill. It was a whole
5 minutes into this BG before any team got a kill and as you can see, the game timed out before anyone won by points. Since the release of BGs I have never seen this happen in deathmatch until this change + set, and now its almost every game.
Final thoughts / solution
Bring back other modes ASAP before you lose player interest. Personally I love open world cyro and PVE so I wont be going anywhere but many are just boycotting BGs and ESO in general until other modes are back.
Dark convergence - I honestly got nothing. I theory craft this game to death, run the Facebook builds page and have always taken time to offer solutions to broken metas, but Dark Convergence, a set that can CC pull in a whole crowd with no aiming or placement skill at all was just such a terrible idea that I have no suggestions on how to fix. Aiming ultimates as part of a group at any size always took at least some coordination, now it just revolves around one of many DC procs that does it all for you. Removing the second pull and a chunk of the damage with the proposed nerf will maaaaaybe see slightly less people using it that cant just get a free one shot on that second pull, but its the pinball CC that is the real issue and unless there is some added effect where a player can only be affected by DC every X amount of seconds even after CC immunity ends, then this issue isnt going away any time soon. This set needs to be reworked completely, not nerfed.
Please ZOS - Your PTS players told you about this way before it went live. They told you Hrothgars was busted and you still sent that mess live. Just look at the streams / Youtube videos of pvp now and the fact that barely anyone is enjoying it. The below screenshot should not be how a BG ends at all.
Rant over,
Yours sincerely, someone who loves ESO but not this ridiculous meta
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