Wolfpaw wrote: »

Siege fails because the ball group shouldn't stay in one place. Siege & a large zerg usually can flush a group away from keep or to their deaths.

I never see a stalemate BvB, either a greenbar with 22k health will vd/pb/cleanse proc a group, server joins a ball group to overwhelmingly out number, one ball screws up, or out skilled/organized.

Only speaking pre update, I'm on console so I haven't seen this update live yet.

I've been doing this a while. I see ball groups of all factions eat meat bags and lancers. They drop multiple siege bubbles and stack every hot available. This lets them ignored siege and also out heal incoming damage from attackers. It's not hard at all. I see it every night. I've been on both sides of it.

Wolfpaw wrote: »

TheEndBringer wrote: »

Wolfpaw wrote: »

Siege fails because the ball group shouldn't stay in one place. Siege & a large zerg usually can flush a group away from keep or to their deaths.

I never see a stalemate BvB, either a greenbar with 22k health will vd/pb/cleanse proc a group, server joins a ball group to overwhelmingly out number, one ball screws up, or out skilled/organized.

Only speaking pre update, I'm on console so I haven't seen this update live yet.

I've been doing this a while. I see ball groups of all factions eat meat bags and lancers. They drop multiple siege bubbles and stack every hot available. This lets them ignored siege and also out heal incoming damage from attackers. It's not hard at all. I see it every night. I've been on both sides of it.

Stacking siege shields is silly, and so is staying in one spot to eat siege damage. Pre PB purge/cleanse spam, sure you could get away with it, & this new update idk as it hasn't hit console yet.

Yes a few siege won't do much, but this exaggeration of unkillable groups is just that.

Get better, coordinate, &/or move out of the way are the options.

My man I'm on XB. I see it every night. I do support for a ball group. You can sit in the same spot and out heal everything. Plague is a joke. It wipes pugs who don't know any better. That's it. Plague hasn't been a danger to ball groups since about the second week after it was released.

The only time they worry about damage is when enough enemies show up that out paces their heals. That number is 30+, all attacking the ball group at once. Then they will retreat.

And the reason why you put up two siege bubbles is so you're certain one will always be active. The mag cost for support is a joke, just like every other support skill. Who cares if something costs 5k mag when you have 3k recovery, pots constantly being hit and the only attack you need to do is heavy.

Also, PC reports are that ball groups are buffed. So yay for everyone else who doesn't like to be forced to run x class and hit the same 3-4 skills on repeat just to wipe pugs.

doesurmindglow wrote: »

Yeah there's been a huge buff. I run in not one but several ball groups, on at least two different factions, and all have experienced a sharp increase in power this patch due to the buffs both to cross heals and to their arsenal of very overtuned sets like Dark Convergence, Hew and Sunder, and Plaguebreak as well as long-time staples like Vicious Death.

We're finding we can even get good use out of Rallying Cry in a 10-12 man as even at the scaled down value it provides more crit resistance than running impen, which allows the comp to move more toward Divines and Well-Fitted traits, delivering more survivability and also more damage. It won't fully replace Transmutation and some groups can use it more reliably than others, but regardless even ball groups with the least experienced players are getting some really good pug farms.

I don't think it's a good direction for the game as a person that's played both inside and outside of the ball group meta. I've warned numerous times that changes intended or speculated to nerf ball groups actually buff them in practice. I've been concerned this series of buffs drives more faction-stacking (ie. bringing more pugs to an objective to be farmed when it proves that 30 50 is not enough), and as a result more laggy, stalemated fights rife with positional desync and buggy procs. I'm alarmed at the deepening challenge presented to players who cannot or would not run with a ball group. But all that thoughtful feedback based on a great many hours of experience tends to get ignored, so ggs?

I'm in the same boat as you. I've been in ballgroups, solo, and smallgroups and the ballgroups have some massively overtuned mechs right now. Though even smallgroups can really stack a few insane things that allow them to farm all day long at this point.

Ballgroups lost their appeal when it went from following along and doing my thing to equipping a specific set and skills and just following the leader and waiting for their call to press the three buttons I was responsible for. It worked. Really well. But it wasn't fun for me. While I find it much more fun to be in less structured groups, small groups, and even solo the fact that we can't stack so many insane buffs on each other is really a major factor in victory. Moreso than almost anything else.

I love to get into big fights where lots of things are going on. But when it's just a bunch of skilled-but-not-grouped players fighting a ballgroup half there size for and hour or so while we dodge predictable ult dumps and constantly move siege until they make a mistake and walk into it it gets real boring real fast. And that's when I usually leave for the night.

Most Ball groups have become the pvp equivalent of trial speed runners who just want to find the cheesiest way possible to win. It's a valid way to play the game.

The issue though is that the trial boss is other players who are trying to stay play the game in a valid way by balancing combat with objectives.

Right now the game heavily rewards the ball groups over the rest of the population. The only thing that separates a 12 man ball group from a 12 man organized group is one chooses to stack bombs because it's the cheesiest way to quickly wipe competition and the others don't want to be stuck running boring synergy bombs.

There's a lot of elements to ball group cc immunity, a single nerf to any one set or skill won't do anything; they'll simply switch to another source of cc immunity.

I appreciate the idea but the truth is, and this is very hard to understand unless you've actually run in a ball group, ball groups do get snared A LOT. The difference is they're highly optimized to break out of it easily using at least 3-4 different mechanics, as well as very high uptimes on sources of stamina regeneration, such that stuns and cc are rarely as consequential to them as they are to their opponents.

I don't think there's a silver bullet nerf that will get rid of them, tbh; and a big part of the problem is trying to find the silver bullet nerf has this way of introducing new issues. For example, if you were to reduce the effectiveness of stun immunity, you also give ball groups more ability to stun their opponents. This is exactly the kind of thinking that informed Vicious Death, Dark Convergence, Plaguebreak, Hew and Sunder, and probably more still to come "silver bullet" sets that end up being among ball groups' most potent weapons. Dark Convergence is an example of a stun that bypasses traditional cc immunities, and it's abundantly clear how effectively such a solution is deployed by ball groups, rather than against them.

There are ways to reduce ball group power potentially, sure, but those aren't really on anyone's radar because right now what we're seeing is changes that increase it substantially. I'm speaking against those changes as an absolute minimum -- that is: please, for the love of god, do not give ball groups more power than they already have -- and that too is largely unheard.

The only thing you can do to put them in check is to insert a set or item with a group kill ability but offers little to no benefit for a 12 man group.

That's a tall order because players are very good at finding ways around limitations.

I've always thought a specialized siege weapon was the proper way to go. One that stacks damage based on the number of people hit over 6. Why 6? This way you can still have 6 on ram.

A ballista, not a catapult, so you can't use it to shoot at people defending a keep. Not a lancer either, that way the damage doesn't get spread out. Scale the damage exponentially for every person hit over 6.

Whatever changes zos makes are largely irrelevant. Ballgroups will always adjust to the meta and 12 players with a singular focus will always be OP. The only thing that would really change things is player collision, but that will never happen.

Here are two questions for any Ballgroup Crowns:

1. What percentage of your AP is generated within a close distance of a Flag, say 48m?
2. What percentage of your AP is generated by Direct Damage AoE?

Here "generating AP" is of course a euphemism

Cuddlypuff wrote: »

Unpopular opinion but most ball groups just aren't very effective and should probably consider another playstyle that has more impact and causes less lag on the server. There's only a handful of good ball groups and they've been scary in every meta due to experience, coordination, movement, individual skill etc etc. Even if you consider the optimal synergy bombing ball with 4 DDs + 8 supports, is it really 3X more impact than a 4 man small-scale group running cross-heals and meta sets?

More potential impact on Alliance score? I would say yes. A small-scale group running a tight Synergy dump is strong offensively but much easier to break, especially upstairs in a keep and such where ballgroups can be particularly tenacious.