BardInSolitude wrote: »

Dr_Con wrote: »

Maybe the servers were coping with the fact that you have 6 hots stacked on you.

1. If the servers can't cope, we need new servers. Stacking HoTs is part of the game.
2. This is probably not a server issue, as only Rapids was affected. While under typical skill lag, skills take 1-2s to go off, but here Rapids clearly does go off but does not provide its effect.

I think something or someone else is the one who needs to cope. The servers were upgraded and are a shared resource, every one of 12 people having 2 hots stacked each is 24 hots per person, amounting to 288 ticking heals per group on top of receiving input from 12 people to cast vigor one time each and RR 4+ times. Any additional buff is 12 more things the server needs to account for. Then receiving heals on top of any heal proc buffs like spc and combat physician, add in rapids and enemies trying in vain to damage you and it's going to create latency issues, as is clearly visible in the bottom left corner of your screen where it says your ping is 280ms. Plus you already have Major Expedition for 16 seconds when you decide to cast Charging Maneuver... Sorry but Major Expedition doesn't stack like heals do, have you explored the possibility of the minor expedition not going off because major expedition was already up and a longer duration?

Just enjoy it while you can. In other games, I know they intentionally heal stack to cause servers to lag/crash so enemies can't get into a zone or have a hard time doing it, and it's not 12 people firing off 288 healing effects, but more like 30 people chaining 3 effects each. Groups in ESO are causing other people to lag and crash as well with this playstyle and making them unable to break free or roll dodge, causing them to miss benefits from their skills as well like this. At this point I'm almost positive ball groups among many others knows this.

@ZOS_Kevin @ZOS_GinaBruno Heal stacking needs to be looked into due to latency and missed skill issues it causes, or you need to add in a compensating feature like a time dilation effect in Cyrodiil (slow motion) to give servers time to process all the inputs and outputs. Limiting how many people in the zone to an arbitrary amount is clearly not working anymore, while it may have freed up resources at first people have min-maxed their way to causing harm to the servers through stacking skills rather than number of bodies.

Also, on an unrelated note, I'm really sad that some people want to turn this discussion about a real functional issue with the game into an excuse to attack other players. I would really recommend you guys join a ball group and maybe you'd like it, and see why we like it, too. My group is open to players of all skill and experience levels - as long as they have an open mind and a willingness to work and improve.

Cheers!

The server and (more importantly) the code cannot handle over-casting HoTs and AOEs. This is just reality. I wish it wasn't the case, but despite claims otherwise, this behavior does cause performance issues, both for those engaging in it, and those simply in the area. ZoS continues to not address it.

HoT stacking is an issue. Continuously reapplying effects before they have expired is an issue. The game simply cannot handle it. It sucks that these things are preventing people in ball groups from having their skills register, but it sucks just as much for people battling over a keep to grind to a standstill because a ball group ran across the map to the combat marker.

I'm in a ball group that fights Bard's group fairly often (ggs btw), so I can confirm personally that group v group PVP does, in fact, happen quite often. It's actually our preferred gameplay at least for our group; I find those fights much more challenging and engaging than a relatively mindless pug farm.

They are also (and this is very important) much, much less laggy.

Lag is rarely an issue in gvg with groups both properly healing, so it stands to reason HOT stacking hardly has a performance impact. The lag is introduced instead when you have 60-80 players zerging the rare 12 who are actually optimized for group play; and ultimately it's the developers' responsibility to improve and maintain performance, not the players'.

Further, we just nerfed HOTs in this last patch. It changed nothing.

I gotta be honest here.

A ball group player complaining that the 60 to 80 players chasing them are causing the lag is the most ball groupy thing I've heard since I stopped doing ball groups.

You purposefully create a group that requires overwhelming odds to defeat then complain that those overwhelming odds are lagging YOU out as they try to kill you.

PVP ball groups are equivalent of vCR+3 world record speed runners. It's about maximizing the every cheese strat available. Nothing wrong with it but let's not pretend like it's some grand, noble gameplay style.

Have I seen ball groups fight one another? Occasionally. But more often I see them racing up and down opposite sides of a keep, alternating pushes against players that are screwed if they stay and screwed if they leave.

Comp groups have benefited in every update for a year now. Healers are tanks. Negates barely useful against them. 15 ticks of HoTs on everyone. Speed. Cleanse. Garbage individual damage so it's all just stall stall stall until ultimate dump.

Not impressed.

Can't say I feel bad about charging maneuvers, when it is exclusively used by groups like yours for an exploitative playstyle that is quite literally ruining the game for everyone else in cyrodill.

The fact is, there is an observable decrease in performance every time a group like yours is present in a fight. As others mentioned, this is primarily due to the practice of "hot stacking". This practice causes an insane number of calculations per second - partially because the abilities are being pressed each second by people who have no other role to worry about, but also because those heals are then going through exponentially more calculations as they scale on every member of your tightly-balled 12 man.

Now, I don't blame you for playing this way. It is undoubtedly effective and extremely easy to do, and you'd be a fool not to do this if your goal is large scale pvp or cyrodiil objectives. However, the current version of this playstyle is undeniably broken and needs an adjustment. Heal over Time abilities should not stack with themselves more than twice, i.e you should only be able to have two radiating regens and two echoing vigors active at any given time. Same goes for ground hots. There also should be a penalty for healing received from other players when you're in a 6 man or larger group, scaling per player over 6. Finally, the snow treaders should either be reworked, or disabled in groups larger than 6.

You say you'd adapt just fine to whatever is done to heal stacking - I truly would love to see it. Back in the day you could actually combat groups like yours as a bomber, or in a highly skilled 4-6 man group. This is no longer possible because your current playstyle is so broken that the only counterplay is a similarly sized group of players doing the same thing.

Lebkuchen wrote: »

Ok, i just tested it for a while, with the hammer in my group, and it has to do with the hammer. As long as you have the hammer speed buff for more than 8 seconds you can not get Minor Expedition from Charging Maneuver. At least you can not see it next to your other buffs. But you can buff yourself with Hurricane (sorc skill).

Wow, finally a useful piece of input. This is fascinating, I was not aware that this was a mechanic - or perhaps a bug? This is still rather baffling but it's very good to know, and I will try to check out myself next time my group happens to get hammer.