I always read that the best groups will still dominate, so to me that means nothing is lost by changing this. I don't see why anyone argues against, because it seems like these groups don't need heal stacking to dominate the dojo.

OBJnoob wrote: »

[snip] I've given many scenarios, some outnumbered and some the opposite. When the less are more skilled they may beat the more. When they are not more skilled they should be quiet and get Xed. That's what I've said the whole time and in multiple ways.

[snip]

I'm sure people wish the builds/gear/skills you use to X them would get nerfed too. [snip]

There isn't anything intricate about directly contradicting the core of your argument with a new one. The mechanic of infinite same morph heal stacking is logically indefensible, and you look uninformed trying to defend it.

Even here, you're now suggesting it is okay to win outnumbered if you're more skilled than the players you're fighting, despite you having said that four people should never win against a ball group because the ball group has greater numbers. So which is it? Should greater numbers always win? Should skill be the primary determining factor?

Have you ever found and fought typical ball group players on their own? Perhaps catching one between keeps trying to catch up to their group? From my experience, they typically play the game at a below-average level. Often times 0 weaving, no animation cancelling of any kind, low APM, complete inability to defend themselves without the 15-20k constant hps provided by their group, poor situational awareness, and the list goes on. This certainly isn't true for all of them, but has been my experience when encountering the vast majority of them outside their groups.

The fact is, these are more often than not lower skill players who are quite literally untouchable solely due to their ability to stack heals infinitely. Skill doesn't matter in the face of this - you cannot outplay the healing numbers these groups are achieving.

Meanwhile, they are wrecking server performance. I know you may not fully understand this because you play on console and you have not experienced the new server hardware that we have on PC NA. You are used to the game being unplayable as soon as there is any significant population in cyrodiil. I also played on console and I would have never thought the game was capable of actually performing well.

On PC NA, you can directly observe the correlation between ball groups logging in/fighting and the cyrodiil campaign becoming unplayable. In fact, the campaigns will work fine during pop locked prime time - if these groups aren't present on the map.

Between the literal "God mode" being achieved by these groups with little effort and the drastic impact on performance they are having for everyone, I simply do not understand how you could defend this in good faith unless you truly do not understand ESO's combat/balance as a whole.

[edited to remove quote]

twing1_ wrote: »

WrathOfInnos wrote: »

A few years ago, many heals only allowed a single instance to be applied to a player. This was broken for other reasons. It meant that a different player's skill choices could make your skill fail to work at all.

There were no checks of whether the random's heals were ticking higher than your own, or how much duration was remaining. This resulted in scenarios where the healers couldn't even proc certain sets (like SPC) because others already cast the same heals/morphs on allies. Having your entire build negated by another player was not good design. The new system has its flaws, but it is an improvement over the old. At least now you know that casting a heal will have some effect on those around you.

Haven't read the whole thread yet so forgive me if it has already been mentioned, but what if stacking multiple instances of the same skill halved the value of the skill, and did not eliminate its effectiveness completely?

Ex/ if someone is running echoing vigor, and a healer also applies echoing vigor to that person, the newly instanced echoing vigor will still tick, but for half the value. If a third one is applied, that one will tick for a quarter of the value, and so on. It keeps being halved.

This way, sets would still proc, skills would still retain at least some effect, but stacking the skills will be nerfed.

Like any other idea, it's better than the nothing that's been tried so far.

Should heal staking be addressed? Absolutely.

Will it stop ball groups? Only the bad ones (which at this point in the game are the vast majority of the ones that exist). The good ball groups will still run rampant, and there really isn't a way to "fix" that (I don't really think ball groups as a concept should be eliminated).

Heal stacking is absurd. With sufficient health and enough instances of the same 2 HoTs, you're immortal barring a crazy double NB gank or some other wacky stuff. Not only would fixing heal stacking reduce survivability (something very needed in this meta) but it would also open up the gates for other heal abilities to be used. You'd see far more Refreshing Paths, Braided Tethers, Intensive Menders, Budding Seeds, Funnel Healths, Cauterizes, and other AOE HoTs being used by these large groups out of necessity, since now they can't just all slot Echoing and Radiating and call it good. It would force these big groups to think a bit harder about how their off heals function, and even if there isn't too much thinking involved, it's still better than the current "Let's all slot echoing and radiating" that we have now.

acastanza_ESO wrote: »

Limit HOTs to two instances of any given source. The reason for two instead of one is simple; it would allow you to benefit from a self-heal and a heal from a dedicated healer, or from the "standard" group composition of two dedicated healers..

Just no. Only single one with priority of own cast. If someone under guidance of healer then his own healing is already worse.
There should be a clear and universal rules: why the hell someone can get only one major/minor buff, one aura and on trollking or something but at the same time can get more then one hot ?
But anyways nowadays developers makes a very bad code so we keep getting Mara that triggers on debuff refreshing and PB that triggers on target's death that was never intended. I have no hopes here

BetweenMidgets wrote: »

React wrote: »

Have you ever found and fought typical ball group players on their own? Perhaps catching one between keeps trying to catch up to their group? From my experience, they typically play the game at a below-average level. Often times 0 weaving, no animation cancelling of any kind, low APM, complete inability to defend themselves without the 15-20k constant hps provided by their group, poor situational awareness, and the list goes on. This certainly isn't true for all of them, but has been my experience when encountering the vast majority of them outside their groups.

The fact is, these are more often than not lower skill players who are quite literally untouchable solely due to their ability to stack heals infinitely. Skill doesn't matter in the face of this - you cannot outplay the healing numbers these groups are achieving.

Of course a member of a ball group is not going to be able to 1vX you.

They sacrifice their ability to solo in order to bring specific buffs and skills to the group. They are MEANT to play in a group - they are often min-maxing for group-play, not for solo-play.

That you're basing your opinion of ball group players / enjoyers on this is pretty ignorant.

Who said anything about them needing to be able to 1vX? None of those things I mentioned, apart from maybe the inability to defend themselves without their groups, have to do with their build. I am speaking specifically about their level of mechanical knowledge and combat capability - which in many cases, is obviously low.

Regardless, I'm not just basing my opinions on those encounters. I've been around the game since launch and have had just about every encounter with these types of players you can imagine. The fact is that when your gameplay consists of primarily spamming smart-target heals or AOEs in a comped out 12 man where you cannot even get close to dying, your ability to actually perform well without the hard carries present in a 12 man simply will not exist.

The ability to be totally untouchable without having any significant PVP experience or ability is imbalanced, regardless of what format it is in or what sets are causing it. Ball groups are simply the most egregious offenders of this right now, and have been for a long time.

React wrote: »

BetweenMidgets wrote: »

React wrote: »

Have you ever found and fought typical ball group players on their own? Perhaps catching one between keeps trying to catch up to their group? From my experience, they typically play the game at a below-average level. Often times 0 weaving, no animation cancelling of any kind, low APM, complete inability to defend themselves without the 15-20k constant hps provided by their group, poor situational awareness, and the list goes on. This certainly isn't true for all of them, but has been my experience when encountering the vast majority of them outside their groups.

The fact is, these are more often than not lower skill players who are quite literally untouchable solely due to their ability to stack heals infinitely. Skill doesn't matter in the face of this - you cannot outplay the healing numbers these groups are achieving.

Of course a member of a ball group is not going to be able to 1vX you.

They sacrifice their ability to solo in order to bring specific buffs and skills to the group. They are MEANT to play in a group - they are often min-maxing for group-play, not for solo-play.

That you're basing your opinion of ball group players / enjoyers on this is pretty ignorant.

Who said anything about them needing to be able to 1vX? None of those things I mentioned, apart from maybe the inability to defend themselves without their groups, have to do with their build. I am speaking specifically about their level of mechanical knowledge and combat capability - which in many cases, is obviously low.

Regardless, I'm not just basing my opinions on those encounters. I've been around the game since launch and have had just about every encounter with these types of players you can imagine. The fact is that when your gameplay consists of primarily spamming smart-target heals or AOEs in a comped out 12 man where you cannot even get close to dying, your ability to actually perform well without the hard carries present in a 12 man simply will not exist.

The ability to be totally untouchable without having any significant PVP experience or ability is imbalanced, regardless of what format it is in or what sets are causing it. Ball groups are simply the most egregious offenders of this right now, and have been for a long time.

There have been few ball groups who sum was equal to its parts. Not many from what I can recollect, but there were certainly a few groups comprised of legitimately good players. I'm not entirely sure that that is a valid critique for the subject of this thread. Individual performance in a team environment is typically not indicative of the team's effectiveness in any avenue; a good leader can make an average unit excellent.

With that said, I am extremely doubtful that ZOS has defined what a team's effectiveness in PVP should be. As a result of that, any idea that they put forth is nothing more than glorified guesswork - the data has no meaning as there is no reference. We as players have an idea of how groups in Cyrodiil should perform, but more often than not it's going to be slanted towards either underperfoming (no point in teamplay) or overperforming (immortality). Ideally, ZOS will tell us exactly how they expect coordinated groups to perform in Cyrodiil and hold to it; instead of releasing sets that amount to "if your 12 man coordinated group uses these 18 sets in tandem, you can kill this other 12 man ball group!"