SeaGtGruff wrote: »

When I asked about benefits to grouping, I meant technical benefits such as any differences in XP/AP gains, healing or buffs that are applied to all members of a group, or things like that. I should know all of that already, but as a mainly solo player I've never really bothered to learn about that stuff.

Since players can always play together in a group using chat or Discord for communicating and coordinating-- which doesn't require being "grouped" together-- that makes grouping sort of superfluous or unnecessary. So what are the actual technical benefits to grouping, as opposed to any purely "social" benefits such as being able to use /group chat rather than /zone chat?

The extent of the benefits a group gains over individuals varies depending on the composition of said group.
It's one thing to group up with 12 guildies or randoms that simply try to stay close by and heal each other and maybe share some buffs attached to skills like Molten weapons or Ice fortress. Those groups will certainly have an advantage over a few ungrouped pugs, especially if in voice chat together to call out targets or coordinate ulti dumps. Still when outnumbered 2 or 3 to 1 by competent players they usually go down as quickly as anyone else.
It's a whole other thing when you get a fully optimized group in which the sets they all wear and skill rotations they all do have been carefully planned out to give nearly 100% uptime on just about every buff you can possibly give each other. For example 1 person wearing Phoenix Moth, 1 wearing SPC or Olorime and 1 wearing Powerful Assault can spam heals to give a group 1K extra wd/sd and 10% extra crit damage. Then between all the group members they still have 21 more 5 piece set openings, 12 monster/other 2piece set spots and over a hundred ability slots for skills like Warhorn and those previously mentioned. All of which they can use to give each other even more damage buffs, regular and crit resist buffs, healing buffs, ulti gen buffs and recovery buffs. Those are the groups that can survive indefinitely being attacked by 5x their numbers while they breeze through oils, cold fire, scattershot, and meatbags.
Take a look through all the various options on eso-sets.com and you'll see a quite a few sets that give out a variety of powerful buffs, but the huge majority state they affect only grouped members or allies. And the exceptions which affect allies whether grouped or not have short duration's, so if you're not staying close (balled up) to the provider for constant refreshes you won't have it for more than a few seconds.

Dr_Con wrote: »

Jaraal wrote: »

Xandreia_ wrote: »

Just don't follow them, if no one follows a ball group they have nothing to do

Good ball groups will take keeps if there is no one to fight. Would you stand back and watch them take the map because you don't want to fight them?

Denying them is a completely valid strategy, so is taking your smaller force to claim some of their keeps and resources while they obsess over farming randoms that respawn on a transitus stone.

PC/NA btw, I'm probably not the only one who sees this happen.

To be fair, there are plenty of ways to defeat ball groups, but most players aren’t willing to slot the skills, wear the gear, or do the things it takes.

Ballgroups are annoying in most contexts. Ballgroups fighting 40 or 50 people (with or without inevitable detonation,) is not one of those contexts.

What we need is a way to fix performance somehow and prevent trolling.

Making 12 coordinated and talented players be literally unable to beat 24 disorganized players should not be our goal.

If you get 40 people together and coordinate them all to use AoE abilities on the same target... You know what that's called? The biggest ballgroup anyone has ever seen.