CameraBeardThePirate wrote: »

JustLovely wrote: »

CameraBeardThePirate wrote: »

CrazyKitty wrote: »

zammo wrote: »

Poss wrote: »

Just add cc immunity to it so you don’t get infinitely ping-ponged

This is all it needs, and all it ever needed.

RoA also needs a clear indicator of where it's happening so players have a chance to counter the set.

Again, the indicator is the group's spearhead gap closing into a pile. You really don't need more of an indicator than that.

That is not a skill indicator. That is the ability to accurately guess the next things to happen in game.

RoA needs a visual que so that players know it's about to go off and where so they can react appropriately even if their back is turned to the ball group for the moment.

There's nothing to "guess" though??? You see someone gap close into your group > you hold block for exactly 1 second.

You probably shouldn't have your back to a ballgroup in the first place - they're generally the biggest threat on the field.

Gap closer are often happening very fast and with positional desync, lag and the gapcloser visual delayed there is often no time at all to react to a single gap closer especially when your block is also delayed. Also not every gap closer is used with rush of agony, players also use gap closer for closing gaps. Should I block every zergling spamming gapcloser in case he could have rush of agony? Maybe I should gapclose on players just to troll them and give them flashbags from ballgroup and so they do not recognize RoA gapcloser in the mass of gapclosers.

Having your back to a ballgroup is hard to avoid if the ballgroups ambushes you before you even know they are there by coming threw a door or jumping from above which ballgroups often do and will lead to many death by ballgroup even if you try to avoid them (by leaving any objective where they are giving up the objective and your allies).

Has anyone tried running Binding Banner scribed skill to prevent being pulled? I tried it and had some success with it.

During the most recent "pvp livestream":

SypherPK: "What's that pulling me all over the place like that?"

What was the response Sypher got to his question? Watch the stream.

CameraBeardThePirate wrote: »

Iriidius wrote: »

CameraBeardThePirate wrote: »

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

CameraBeardThePirate wrote: »

The warning is the person gap closing into your group. If you see someone gap close, hold block for a second.

Between this and the agrees, that's 5 VD explosions from trying to block the followup fear stun.

If the person is pulling on someone else, and you block the pull, you'll be out of range of the fear if you were spread out as you should be.

If the person is pulling on you, and people get pulled into you to become VD fodder, you aren't spreading out as much as you should when it becomes apparent that an enemy is running rush.

Either way, the death is your own fault.

So despite blocking randoms already must be spread far out before the ballgroup even casts gapcloser so all the time while ballgroups thanks to group effects can stay stacked all the time without having to fear getting bombed and not even have to block. Looks really fair and balanced, doesnt it?

Compare that to solo bombers who not only have a faction of the dmg that will often not even kill you if you get hit by full combo but also much less CC allowing you to just walk out of it.


I often had ballgroups pulling on me when I was standing alone with no other players in meele range and still a few players pulled into me because ballgroups also jump solo players and rush of agony has such a huge range.

When you are spreading out as much as you should you are spreading out too far to hit them with meele aoes before they finish their burst and keep running and you miss the only moment they are staying at a place and can be hit.
Rush of Agony can pull players from side doors or wayshrine to flag or vice versa so it covers half of a (non-tri)keep/outpost lower floor.

Look, I'm not arguing Rush shouldn't be nerfed, because it should.

The issue is that counterplay was already added when they gave it a delay, and it didn't change much. That's in part because of the issues you pointed out, but the main problem is the set's functionality itself - the fact that it is the only thing in the entire game that will CC you without applying CC immunity.

Make Rush apply CC immunity, and suddenly half the people running it will stop running it. Seriously - that one small thing is why ballgroups run it. It locks down targets for twice as long as any other stun in the game. If you weren't able to be feared right after the pull, the amount of people running the set would drop substantially. It would still be great for clumping people up, but would no longer be a death sentence every time.

Cant argue against adding the proper cc immunity. However, all I see happening next is you just root players after being pulled. Which leads to panic roll dodges and guaranteed AOE hits. My dawnbreaker followup to rush will still hit the target.

Proper counterplay should be prioritized. Something that is fleeting in todays combat system where zos's priority is flashy dlc skills/sets that make combat hard to see. If you look at most of the original skills/animations, the important animations like ultimates would be flashy compared to simple buff skills like lightning form.

I dont know how they mess things like this up. Any counterplay mechanic must have a telegraphed animation followed by a delay for the receiving player to respond. Failure to respond would lead to punishment. For Hard CC in this case the pull(stun) this counterplay would blocking(not rolling) and failure to do so results in being pulled and cc immunity being applied.

---

My go to zos counterplay design failure is with dizzy swing pre and post elsweyr.

Pre - Dizzy was a simple 1.3-1.5s (5-6 human reaction times) cast timed skill which has high burst damage and a knockup. Failure to respond by rolling, blocking, running, strafing during that time period had clear punishment for the defending player. Succeeding to respond in that time period wasted the caster's time and left them open to damage during the cast.

Post - Dizzy became a short 0.8s (3-4 human reaction times) cast timed skill with mediocre damage. It also has two forms of CC which is based on a near invisible debuff on enemy players. One being the stun which is disjointed from the GCD system and has no incoming animation. Unlike the PRE dizzy knockup being tied to the clear swing animation, this stun can come from ANY enemy which happens to hit a medium attack which may be invisible in an animation cancel. The second CC is a snare which applies to the enemy after the debuff cooldown which again is invisible.

I still dont understand why they added the snare in the first place. Anyways, one of these skills was clearly designed with clear combat counterplay in mind.

I just laugh when I see this set and look at its power compared to other sets in the game. The utility is insane and the damage is high enough to make it a 5 piece bonus. Its CC is strong enough for a 10-piece set.

Any set that can pull an unlimited amount of people into a nice little ball for your group to bomb is insanely strong. Sorry!

It's a set designed to punish poor gearing and poor skill. Basically it's a sweatlords dream set to 1vX in Cyrodiil.

If the pull hits, it also CC's the enemy while pulling, increasing the damage window a player has to burst, and since it doesn't apply CC immunity, the player can use a CC skill again to have an even greater CC window and further burst. No doubt the rapid CC stuttering can also cause mis-inputs or disregarded input thanks to lag.

The argument that "Just assume every charge ability in the game is going to have this effect", is bad design.

I wouldn't be surprised if this set was designed in part with a 1vX'ers input. As far as PvE utility, it would only need the pull. But then they went and added a proc that's about as damaging as Tarnished. And specified that it doesn't apply CC immunity. Oh and unlike tarnished it has no visual indicator apart from becoming paranoid at every gap-closer in the game.

Wonder which streamer is pleasured that they talked the combat designers into making such a set they can use for more clips.

Aldoss wrote: »

CameraBeardThePirate wrote: »

Iriidius wrote: »

CameraBeardThePirate wrote: »

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

CameraBeardThePirate wrote: »

The warning is the person gap closing into your group. If you see someone gap close, hold block for a second.

Between this and the agrees, that's 5 VD explosions from trying to block the followup fear stun.

If the person is pulling on someone else, and you block the pull, you'll be out of range of the fear if you were spread out as you should be.

If the person is pulling on you, and people get pulled into you to become VD fodder, you aren't spreading out as much as you should when it becomes apparent that an enemy is running rush.

Either way, the death is your own fault.

So despite blocking randoms already must be spread far out before the ballgroup even casts gapcloser so all the time while ballgroups thanks to group effects can stay stacked all the time without having to fear getting bombed and not even have to block. Looks really fair and balanced, doesnt it?

Compare that to solo bombers who not only have a faction of the dmg that will often not even kill you if you get hit by full combo but also much less CC allowing you to just walk out of it.


I often had ballgroups pulling on me when I was standing alone with no other players in meele range and still a few players pulled into me because ballgroups also jump solo players and rush of agony has such a huge range.

When you are spreading out as much as you should you are spreading out too far to hit them with meele aoes before they finish their burst and keep running and you miss the only moment they are staying at a place and can be hit.
Rush of Agony can pull players from side doors or wayshrine to flag or vice versa so it covers half of a (non-tri)keep/outpost lower floor.

Look, I'm not arguing Rush shouldn't be nerfed, because it should.

The issue is that counterplay was already added when they gave it a delay, and it didn't change much. That's in part because of the issues you pointed out, but the main problem is the set's functionality itself - the fact that it is the only thing in the entire game that will CC you without applying CC immunity.

Make Rush apply CC immunity, and suddenly half the people running it will stop running it. Seriously - that one small thing is why ballgroups run it. It locks down targets for twice as long as any other stun in the game. If you weren't able to be feared right after the pull, the amount of people running the set would drop substantially. It would still be great for clumping people up, but would no longer be a death sentence every time.

100% this.

All it needs to do is apply CC immunity. It's absolutely unreal that this set was allowed to enter live while breaking core combat mechanics.

MincMincMinc wrote: »

However, all I see happening next is you just root players after being pulled. Which leads to panic roll dodges and guaranteed AOE hits. My dawnbreaker followup to rush will still hit the target.

This already happens with Dark Convergence and it's mostly fine. The telegraph for DC is just way way way more beginner friendly than RoA is. RoA's telegraph is the thin, dark red tether that Void Bash uses. It's very fast, very thin, and very dark. Easy to miss.

I actually think that's fine considering that the difference between RoA and DC is that DC you can place anywhere (away from you) whereas with RoA, you are the center of the storm which can sometimes work against you if the bomb fails.

It just needs to apply CC immunity. It's crazy that it's gone this long without having that added. It's really such a stale meta. You do not see any organized groups that don't rely on it because this one set is the most abusive of all the pull sets of another player's agency.

This meta keeps getting more stale with each patch. They keep adding stuff to buff group survivability and it further reinforces the pull meta. Arcanists shields, shields from sets, and shields from scribing coupled with ult gen sets (for stupid high barrier up time) means groups have 40k perma shields on at all times, on top of insanely high healing and max hp. The only way to kill a group like that is to run rush to lock them down for longer. If your group doesn't run rush you have no shot at killing other groups, this is a big reason why every single group runs this, you are pretty much forced to. Also running rush allows you to build tankier. When you lock a group of pugs down for that long you don't really need that much damage to secure kills so you can stack more defensively, this set has pretty much trivialized bombing pugs for groups. Honestly I think this meta has driven a lot of players away. A lot of ball groups have also left (less pugs to farm and gvgs are boring and stalematey), but it's not as noticeable because the pug population is way down also.