No current counter to comped groups

xFocused · February 24

One of the big (But not biggest in my opinion) problems surrounding Cyrodiil is the current meta of comped out groups and how there seems to be virtually no counter to these groups except for avoiding them entirely. With sets like Rush of Agony overpowering these groups, insane amounts of stacked heals, shields & buffs, not to mention siege weapons doing absolutely nothing to these groups, it's kinda ridiculous how Zos has yet to come up with a solution on how to deal with them. Sets like Snake in the Stars WAS a good idea in theory to deal with comped groups but was killed on sight in the PTS. Negates can be useful, but not every solo player is on a sorc with a Negate ready to go.

Currently during the Midyear event, this has honestly been one of the most underwhelming MYM events if you're solo since these groups are running rampant everywhere basically killing any kind of large scale fight. I'm watching them stroll through siege, skills like Borrowed Time and Caltrops seem to do nothing in terms of slowing them down.

So I have to ask, what's the solution here? I'm not even saying kill ball group/group play, but there should absolutely be some sort of effective counter to handling these groups instead of just having to let them have free reign of the map constantly.

Stridig · February 24

Unrelenting pressure and coordination. Not easy to do solo so I understand your perspective, but pressure and coordination eventually will do the job.

CrazyKitty · February 24

The solution has been posted on this forum thousands of times now.

Limit heal and shield stacking to one instance of each buff per player and make RoA only work on monsters.

Stridig wrote: »

Unrelenting pressure and coordination. Not easy to do solo so I understand your perspective, but pressure and coordination eventually will do the job.

The only thing that can take down a ball group for the last 1-2 years now is a stronger ball group. And most ball groups avoid other ball groups. No amount of pressure from siege or ungrouped zerging players can get the job done. ZOS needs to fix this years ago. Letting it go on this long is inexcusable.

xFocused · February 24

CrazyKitty wrote: »

The solution has been posted on this forum thousands of times now.

Limit heal and shield stacking to one instance of each buff per player and make RoA only work on monsters.

Stridig wrote: »

Unrelenting pressure and coordination. Not easy to do solo so I understand your perspective, but pressure and coordination eventually will do the job.

The only thing that can take down a ball group for the last 1-2 years now is a stronger ball group. And most ball groups avoid other ball groups. No amount of pressure from siege or ungrouped zerging players can get the job done. ZOS needs to fix this years ago. Letting it go on this long is inexcusable.

This. I've seen solo players stack siege, aoe stuns/immobilizations, multiple negates even at times all the while they just sustain all of it. Ball groups have been a thing for a long time in PvP but over time they've only become more and more overpowered and Zos has yet to come up with any kind of solution or counter to them

malistorr · February 25

Agree with the posters here. It's cool that ZOS wants to incentivize group play I guess by making these groups more powerful than just 12 solo players. But when there is nothing that can kill them but another huge ball group I think that makes for bad gameplay. ZOS obviously disagrees or they would have already changed things. It's yet another example of how out of touch they are with their player base. This is not bashing, it is simply pointing out reality. Most PVP players are solo players or players who group up with their guildmates but aren't comped. The current state of the game is that you either die to these groups or you go to another keep and have to constantly run away from them. That's not what makes for a fun game in my opinion or that of most everyone I've played with in Cyrodiil.

xFocused · February 25

malistorr wrote: »

Agree with the posters here. It's cool that ZOS wants to incentivize group play I guess by making these groups more powerful than just 12 solo players. But when there is nothing that can kill them but another huge ball group I think that makes for bad gameplay. ZOS obviously disagrees or they would have already changed things. It's yet another example of how out of touch they are with their player base. This is not bashing, it is simply pointing out reality. Most PVP players are solo players or players who group up with their guildmates but aren't comped. The current state of the game is that you either die to these groups or you go to another keep and have to constantly run away from them. That's not what makes for a fun game in my opinion or that of most everyone I've played with in Cyrodiil.

Spot on. Last night there was a 12 man that ended up taking a home keep from us, we left that keep, went all down to AD territory to grab our scroll and they were already there by the time we got the scroll out of the keep. Again, siege is useless, aoe skills to hinder them (caltrops, borrowed time etc..) are useless and most PvP players are usually just solo, casual players not comped out to fight these groups

buzzclops · February 26

I miss the times when you actually had to have strategy in gvg fights. Like kite and make the other group spread out or bring them to a choke point on the map and use terrain and stuff. The pull sets have completely killed any strategy and skill based combat. It just plays the game for you with the most basic rotation possible. It’s an absolute cancer that’s spreading in our game. Pair that with the completely overturned cross healing and of course the experience is disgusting.

The thing is… I think the devs actually like that any player can pick up the sets, slot the cross heal skills and follow a crown and feel like a god while playing in groups like this. All it takes is joining/building what your group needs which isn’t too hard. It’s almost like you’re pveing in PvP. These groups are so overturned that it’s like you’re fighting npcs when you’re in one of em.

You don’t have to be 1. Great at active defense and line of sighting. 2. Have the best dps rotation and buff rotation while fighting. 3. A super well designed/balance build like 1vxers do and spend months tweaking. You just overpower ppl tru sheer numbers and pulls that gives it free to you. It’s really just like pve, you just do your role and everyone’s carrying everyone as a group.

xFocused · February 26

buzzclops wrote: »

I miss the times when you actually had to have strategy in gvg fights. Like kite and make the other group spread out or bring them to a choke point on the map and use terrain and stuff. The pull sets have completely killed any strategy and skill based combat. It just plays the game for you with the most basic rotation possible. It’s an absolute cancer that’s spreading in our game. Pair that with the completely overturned cross healing and of course the experience is disgusting.

The thing is… I think the devs actually like that any player can pick up the sets, slot the cross heal skills and follow a crown and feel like a god while playing in groups like this. All it takes is joining/building what your group needs which isn’t too hard. It’s almost like you’re pveing in PvP. These groups are so overturned that it’s like you’re fighting npcs when you’re in one of em.

You don’t have to be 1. Great at active defense and line of sighting. 2. Have the best dps rotation and buff rotation while fighting. 3. A super well designed/balance build like 1vxers do and spend months tweaking. You just overpower ppl tru sheer numbers and pulls that gives it free to you. It’s really just like pve, you just do your role and everyone’s carrying everyone as a group.

I agree, I miss the barebones of what Cyrodill used to be, there were meta sets, there always will be but it's so out of control right now to where solo/casual players just don't stand a chance against these groups unless another BG shows up or you server stack them. On the note of pull sets, I actually don't have a issue with Dark Con because the visual proc is so visable that it's rather simple to counter, the cooldown isn't terrible either. Rush of Agony on the other hand is completely broken and I just don't see how anyone can defend that set anymore. BG's have been a thing for years, even when 24 man groups existed but they were much easier to counter than what we current have

Genfe · February 26

IMO whatever prevents the ball groups from being immobilized needs to go” I believe they all run snowtreaders” A dodge roll every 2 seconds like the rest of us would pull them apart.

xFocused · February 26

Genfe wrote: »

IMO whatever prevents the ball groups from being immobilized needs to go” I believe they all run snowtreaders” A dodge roll every 2 seconds like the rest of us would pull them apart.

Snow treaders is the big one for sure. However, there's groups that don't run Snow Treaders and skills like caltrops, turn evil, borrowed time and other AoE skills that apply some sort of stun, fear or immobilization have 0 effect on them, it really is a broken mechanic in my opinion

WaywardArgonian · February 26

Genfe wrote: »

IMO whatever prevents the ball groups from being immobilized needs to go” I believe they all run snowtreaders” A dodge roll every 2 seconds like the rest of us would pull them apart.

I agree Snow Treaders are OP and the whole immobilization mechanic needs a rework but good ballgroups can play without Snow Treaders and some of them did when the no proc campaign was still a thing.

xFocused · February 26

WaywardArgonian wrote: »

Genfe wrote: »

IMO whatever prevents the ball groups from being immobilized needs to go” I believe they all run snowtreaders” A dodge roll every 2 seconds like the rest of us would pull them apart.

I agree Snow Treaders are OP and the whole immobilization mechanic needs a rework but good ballgroups can play without Snow Treaders and some of them did when the no proc campaign was still a thing.

But there should still be some sort of effective snare, stun or immobilization even when they aren't using Snow Treads, lol, this is a problem.

WaywardArgonian · February 26

xFocused wrote: »

But there should still be some sort of effective snare, stun or immobilization even when they aren't using Snow Treads, lol, this is a problem.

There are plenty of those but you will still need to strike a balance. No one enjoys playing a game where you get snared/rooted all the time. Increasing snare removals like Race Against Time and Shuffle to around 7 seconds would already help. That way you can invest resources into not getting snared without completely ignoring the mechanic.

Heren · February 26

WaywardArgonian wrote: »

I agree Snow Treaders are OP and the whole immobilization mechanic needs a rework but good ballgroups can play without Snow Treaders and some of them did when the no proc campaign was still a thing.

Maybe I didn't cross good ones, but the ball groups I encountered in no-proc - when it was still a thing and not a one faction lobby, so, 2 or 3 years ago ? - were really not that impressive. They were resillient, sure, but like a tower running troll who kill you because you allow him to do so. Without proc sets, they were weaker but most importantly there ability to just wipe dozens of people were far limited. They needed choke-point to do so, and without that it was just easy to spread when they come toward you.

But yeah, maybe it was just bad ones on no-proc <shrug>

WaywardArgonian · February 27

Heren wrote: »

Maybe I didn't cross good ones, but the ball groups I encountered in no-proc - when it was still a thing and not a one faction lobby, so, 2 or 3 years ago ? - were really not that impressive. They were resillient, sure, but like a tower running troll who kill you because you allow him to do so. Without proc sets, they were weaker but most importantly there ability to just wipe dozens of people were far limited. They needed choke-point to do so, and without that it was just easy to spread when they come toward you.

But yeah, maybe it was just bad ones on no-proc <shrug>

A lot of the good ones left to GH so the overall quality of ballgroups on no-proc was lower. What really hurt them was the change to Harmony, since some groups relied heavily on Harmony bombs for kills and couldn't adjust when that was taken away. I see some of those same ballgroups on GH now and they are still pretty easy to take down.

But there were some good ones left back in the day, so it was definitely possible to play that style even with no access to proc sets. The real difficulty of playing there was not the lack of Snow Treaders, but the lack of sets like VD and Plaguebreak to even the playing field against faction stacked zergs.

Kartalin · February 27

WaywardArgonian wrote: »

The real difficulty of playing there was not the lack of Snow Treaders, but the lack of sets like VD and Plaguebreak to even the playing field against faction stacked zergs.

100% this

xylena_lazarow · February 27

Stridig wrote: »

Unrelenting pressure and coordination.

It still often only ends when the comp group gets bored and leaves voluntarily.

Boredom is not counterplay, or at least it shouldn't be in a game that's supposed to be fun.

Heren · February 28

Kartalin wrote: »

WaywardArgonian wrote: »

The real difficulty of playing there was not the lack of Snow Treaders, but the lack of sets like VD and Plaguebreak to even the playing field against faction stacked zergs.

100% this

Yeah, lack of masse destruction tools. But indeed on no-proc ball groups could still be effective, and they were maybe even balanced without these tools - unable to repeatedly wipe zergs without shrugging off their damage, sur, but... wait, wait, balance mean ball groups should be able to reign suprem over hundreds ennemy players, right, I forgot.

Seriously though, fighting them was boring and atrocious because they were highly resillient ( and because I wasn't coordinated with anyone ), but it was possible. On proc campaign, you can't really fight a zerg it seems.

But anyway, no-proc's gone ( It was dead / dying anyway on EU ), maybe vengeance will bring something.

Kartalin · February 28

Heren wrote: »

Kartalin wrote: »

WaywardArgonian wrote: »

The real difficulty of playing there was not the lack of Snow Treaders, but the lack of sets like VD and Plaguebreak to even the playing field against faction stacked zergs.

100% this

Yeah, lack of masse destruction tools. But indeed on no-proc ball groups could still be effective, and they were maybe even balanced without these tools - unable to repeatedly wipe zergs without shrugging off their damage, sur, but... wait, wait, balance mean ball groups should be able to reign suprem over hundreds ennemy players, right, I forgot.

Seriously though, fighting them was boring and atrocious because they were highly resillient ( and because I wasn't coordinated with anyone ), but it was possible. On proc campaign, you can't really fight a zerg it seems.

But anyway, no-proc's gone ( It was dead / dying anyway on EU ), maybe vengeance will bring something.

The issue we ran into in no proc on PCNA was that it worked well when the three factions were relatively balanced from a population standpoint. As soon as one faction gained the upperhand by a certain margin, things became rapidly lopsided.

For PCNA no proc Ravenwatch was at one point the second most popular campaign behind Gray Host. But after one faction became dominant (even though the other two factions would occasionally overrun the map during lower pop times) then it was just a consistent rate of attrition as far as who would stick around to face the overwhelming numbers thrown against us that we didn't really have any reliable way of dealing with. Proximity detonation by itself could not do the job. Most of our combat near the end of our time there was 30 or 40+ versus our 12. Our faction pugs wouldn't even try to help fight the zerg. We could never truly win a fight, it was just a matter of time before we got worn down and could not keep our opponents from repeatedly resurrecting their fallen to secure victory.

My current ball group definitely wants to give vengeance a chance as it could be interesting. We realize it's just the beginning step and they're just testing things out, but we want to do our part in helping to improve cyrodiil.

YandereGirlfriend · February 28

xFocused wrote: »

malistorr wrote: »

Agree with the posters here. It's cool that ZOS wants to incentivize group play I guess by making these groups more powerful than just 12 solo players. But when there is nothing that can kill them but another huge ball group I think that makes for bad gameplay. ZOS obviously disagrees or they would have already changed things. It's yet another example of how out of touch they are with their player base. This is not bashing, it is simply pointing out reality. Most PVP players are solo players or players who group up with their guildmates but aren't comped. The current state of the game is that you either die to these groups or you go to another keep and have to constantly run away from them. That's not what makes for a fun game in my opinion or that of most everyone I've played with in Cyrodiil.

Spot on. Last night there was a 12 man that ended up taking a home keep from us, we left that keep, went all down to AD territory to grab our scroll and they were already there by the time we got the scroll out of the keep. Again, siege is useless, aoe skills to hinder them (caltrops, borrowed time etc..) are useless and most PvP players are usually just solo, casual players not comped out to fight these groups

What exactly are you trying to say here, though?

This is like expecting that a random Dungeon Finder group in theme builds (no shade to theme builds, I use them all the time in PvE!) should be able to compete with a premade group of veteran sweaties who planned their comp and regularly practice together to complete trifectas. The level of effort is not remotely the same so why are we expecting equivalent outcomes?

There are many reasons why pick-up groups often get rolled. Most of it comes down to the classic sweat vs. casual dichotomy plus things like general inexperience in PvP and lack of knowledge of game mechanics. Which is fine because we all start somewhere.

I definitely remember being a new player and getting hard-farmed by 1vXers in towers and I even made some ancient posts here on the forum talking about how those players obviously needed nerfs because 12 randoms should always be able to kill a smaller group of players. But that was just the frustrated newb in me talking and it soon became clear that, no, those players were actually just way better than me at the game so it made sense that I died to them.

A ballgroup is that sweaty premade group of 1vXers hard-farming 12 inside of a resource tower but scaled-up.

xFocused · March 1

YandereGirlfriend wrote: »

xFocused wrote: »

malistorr wrote: »

Agree with the posters here. It's cool that ZOS wants to incentivize group play I guess by making these groups more powerful than just 12 solo players. But when there is nothing that can kill them but another huge ball group I think that makes for bad gameplay. ZOS obviously disagrees or they would have already changed things. It's yet another example of how out of touch they are with their player base. This is not bashing, it is simply pointing out reality. Most PVP players are solo players or players who group up with their guildmates but aren't comped. The current state of the game is that you either die to these groups or you go to another keep and have to constantly run away from them. That's not what makes for a fun game in my opinion or that of most everyone I've played with in Cyrodiil.

Spot on. Last night there was a 12 man that ended up taking a home keep from us, we left that keep, went all down to AD territory to grab our scroll and they were already there by the time we got the scroll out of the keep. Again, siege is useless, aoe skills to hinder them (caltrops, borrowed time etc..) are useless and most PvP players are usually just solo, casual players not comped out to fight these groups

What exactly are you trying to say here, though?

This is like expecting that a random Dungeon Finder group in theme builds (no shade to theme builds, I use them all the time in PvE!) should be able to compete with a premade group of veteran sweaties who planned their comp and regularly practice together to complete trifectas. The level of effort is not remotely the same so why are we expecting equivalent outcomes?

There are many reasons why pick-up groups often get rolled. Most of it comes down to the classic sweat vs. casual dichotomy plus things like general inexperience in PvP and lack of knowledge of game mechanics. Which is fine because we all start somewhere.

I definitely remember being a new player and getting hard-farmed by 1vXers in towers and I even made some ancient posts here on the forum talking about how those players obviously needed nerfs because 12 randoms should always be able to kill a smaller group of players. But that was just the frustrated newb in me talking and it soon became clear that, no, those players were actually just way better than me at the game so it made sense that I died to them.

A ballgroup is that sweaty premade group of 1vXers hard-farming 12 inside of a resource tower but scaled-up.

I’m saying what I’ve said in most of these comments and what others have been saying, there should be some sort of effective counter towards comped groups since currently there seems to be none. Siege is useless, most skills that are supposed to offer some sort of stun, fear for immovable does nothing. You can’t exactly ignore them if they choose to run wild in a home keep. I’m not saying scrap them altogether but to sit here and just shrug and say “get good newb” is kinda ridiculous, especially when most (I would assume at least) PvP players are solo/casual and aren’t on builds to deal with these groups. I’ve ran in multiple BG’s over the years and have absolutely no issue admitting that current day comped groups are way too overpowering with sets like rush and the amount of heals, shields and buffs that can be stacked.

I get that BG’s are just using the tools in the game and again, not saying just scrap that style of gameplay but it’s a little silly that solo/casuals either need to build into that style or just continue to be free AP for these groups. There should be some sort of balance here and currently there isn’t any. During this midyear event all you saw was comped groups running wild everywhere with Rush, lol. There were no big zerg, 3 way fights, just comped group after group steamrolling while ignoring each other, lol.

YandereGirlfriend · March 1

xFocused wrote: »

YandereGirlfriend wrote: »

xFocused wrote: »

malistorr wrote: »

Agree with the posters here. It's cool that ZOS wants to incentivize group play I guess by making these groups more powerful than just 12 solo players. But when there is nothing that can kill them but another huge ball group I think that makes for bad gameplay. ZOS obviously disagrees or they would have already changed things. It's yet another example of how out of touch they are with their player base. This is not bashing, it is simply pointing out reality. Most PVP players are solo players or players who group up with their guildmates but aren't comped. The current state of the game is that you either die to these groups or you go to another keep and have to constantly run away from them. That's not what makes for a fun game in my opinion or that of most everyone I've played with in Cyrodiil.

Spot on. Last night there was a 12 man that ended up taking a home keep from us, we left that keep, went all down to AD territory to grab our scroll and they were already there by the time we got the scroll out of the keep. Again, siege is useless, aoe skills to hinder them (caltrops, borrowed time etc..) are useless and most PvP players are usually just solo, casual players not comped out to fight these groups

What exactly are you trying to say here, though?

This is like expecting that a random Dungeon Finder group in theme builds (no shade to theme builds, I use them all the time in PvE!) should be able to compete with a premade group of veteran sweaties who planned their comp and regularly practice together to complete trifectas. The level of effort is not remotely the same so why are we expecting equivalent outcomes?

There are many reasons why pick-up groups often get rolled. Most of it comes down to the classic sweat vs. casual dichotomy plus things like general inexperience in PvP and lack of knowledge of game mechanics. Which is fine because we all start somewhere.

I definitely remember being a new player and getting hard-farmed by 1vXers in towers and I even made some ancient posts here on the forum talking about how those players obviously needed nerfs because 12 randoms should always be able to kill a smaller group of players. But that was just the frustrated newb in me talking and it soon became clear that, no, those players were actually just way better than me at the game so it made sense that I died to them.

A ballgroup is that sweaty premade group of 1vXers hard-farming 12 inside of a resource tower but scaled-up.

I’m saying what I’ve said in most of these comments and what others have been saying, there should be some sort of effective counter towards comped groups since currently there seems to be none. Siege is useless, most skills that are supposed to offer some sort of stun, fear for immovable does nothing. You can’t exactly ignore them if they choose to run wild in a home keep. I’m not saying scrap them altogether but to sit here and just shrug and say “get good newb” is kinda ridiculous, especially when most (I would assume at least) PvP players are solo/casual and aren’t on builds to deal with these groups. I’ve ran in multiple BG’s over the years and have absolutely no issue admitting that current day comped groups are way too overpowering with sets like rush and the amount of heals, shields and buffs that can be stacked.

I get that BG’s are just using the tools in the game and again, not saying just scrap that style of gameplay but it’s a little silly that solo/casuals either need to build into that style or just continue to be free AP for these groups. There should be some sort of balance here and currently there isn’t any. During this midyear event all you saw was comped groups running wild everywhere with Rush, lol. There were no big zerg, 3 way fights, just comped group after group steamrolling while ignoring each other, lol.

But like what is your actual point here?

Stuns aren't ineffective because they don't Stun. They do. And they're annoying. And frequently disruptive. When you play in a ballgroup you get Stunned on cooldown, every 8 seconds because there are like 10 players in every zerg that do nothing but spam Stuns on every GCD.

The problem is that low-tier players just spam them randomly on ballgroups without giving any thought to things like, "I am giving them free CC immunity now so that when a player that actually knows what they are doing tries to Negate and bomb them in a few seconds it won't matter at all." THAT is the issue. Which all stems from lack of game knowledge and inexperience in PvP.

And then like with siege. Siege is actually wildly overpowered for what it is and the actual effort required to use it. A single oil is like a 10k DPS and one person can run like 4x simultaneously. Coldfires speak for themselves and will one-shot most casual players. Siege enjoyers can do this all from the complete safety of walls by clicking a single button and without knowing literally anything else about PvP.

Most ballgroups don't actually do things like siege super hot rams because they can't actually take that sort of sustained damage. Most ballgroups try to PvDoor into a keep and then start a farm because the process of actually sieging a defended keep wastes tons of raid time and has dicey success prospects. It also makes you super vulnerable if another ballgroup or skilled small-man bombing group shows up. Because if you get Negated and bombed while taking that sort of pressure you are absolutely dunzo.

xFocused · March 1

YandereGirlfriend wrote: »

xFocused wrote: »

YandereGirlfriend wrote: »

xFocused wrote: »

malistorr wrote: »

Agree with the posters here. It's cool that ZOS wants to incentivize group play I guess by making these groups more powerful than just 12 solo players. But when there is nothing that can kill them but another huge ball group I think that makes for bad gameplay. ZOS obviously disagrees or they would have already changed things. It's yet another example of how out of touch they are with their player base. This is not bashing, it is simply pointing out reality. Most PVP players are solo players or players who group up with their guildmates but aren't comped. The current state of the game is that you either die to these groups or you go to another keep and have to constantly run away from them. That's not what makes for a fun game in my opinion or that of most everyone I've played with in Cyrodiil.

Spot on. Last night there was a 12 man that ended up taking a home keep from us, we left that keep, went all down to AD territory to grab our scroll and they were already there by the time we got the scroll out of the keep. Again, siege is useless, aoe skills to hinder them (caltrops, borrowed time etc..) are useless and most PvP players are usually just solo, casual players not comped out to fight these groups

What exactly are you trying to say here, though?

This is like expecting that a random Dungeon Finder group in theme builds (no shade to theme builds, I use them all the time in PvE!) should be able to compete with a premade group of veteran sweaties who planned their comp and regularly practice together to complete trifectas. The level of effort is not remotely the same so why are we expecting equivalent outcomes?

There are many reasons why pick-up groups often get rolled. Most of it comes down to the classic sweat vs. casual dichotomy plus things like general inexperience in PvP and lack of knowledge of game mechanics. Which is fine because we all start somewhere.

I definitely remember being a new player and getting hard-farmed by 1vXers in towers and I even made some ancient posts here on the forum talking about how those players obviously needed nerfs because 12 randoms should always be able to kill a smaller group of players. But that was just the frustrated newb in me talking and it soon became clear that, no, those players were actually just way better than me at the game so it made sense that I died to them.

A ballgroup is that sweaty premade group of 1vXers hard-farming 12 inside of a resource tower but scaled-up.

I’m saying what I’ve said in most of these comments and what others have been saying, there should be some sort of effective counter towards comped groups since currently there seems to be none. Siege is useless, most skills that are supposed to offer some sort of stun, fear for immovable does nothing. You can’t exactly ignore them if they choose to run wild in a home keep. I’m not saying scrap them altogether but to sit here and just shrug and say “get good newb” is kinda ridiculous, especially when most (I would assume at least) PvP players are solo/casual and aren’t on builds to deal with these groups. I’ve ran in multiple BG’s over the years and have absolutely no issue admitting that current day comped groups are way too overpowering with sets like rush and the amount of heals, shields and buffs that can be stacked.

I get that BG’s are just using the tools in the game and again, not saying just scrap that style of gameplay but it’s a little silly that solo/casuals either need to build into that style or just continue to be free AP for these groups. There should be some sort of balance here and currently there isn’t any. During this midyear event all you saw was comped groups running wild everywhere with Rush, lol. There were no big zerg, 3 way fights, just comped group after group steamrolling while ignoring each other, lol.

But like what is your actual point here?

Stuns aren't ineffective because they don't Stun. They do. And they're annoying. And frequently disruptive. When you play in a ballgroup you get Stunned on cooldown, every 8 seconds because there are like 10 players in every zerg that do nothing but spam Stuns on every GCD.

The problem is that low-tier players just spam them randomly on ballgroups without giving any thought to things like, "I am giving them free CC immunity now so that when a player that actually knows what they are doing tries to Negate and bomb them in a few seconds it won't matter at all." THAT is the issue. Which all stems from lack of game knowledge and inexperience in PvP.

And then like with siege. Siege is actually wildly overpowered for what it is and the actual effort required to use it. A single oil is like a 10k DPS and one person can run like 4x simultaneously. Coldfires speak for themselves and will one-shot most casual players. Siege enjoyers can do this all from the complete safety of walls by clicking a single button and without knowing literally anything else about PvP.

Most ballgroups don't actually do things like siege super hot rams because they can't actually take that sort of sustained damage. Most ballgroups try to PvDoor into a keep and then start a farm because the process of actually sieging a defended keep wastes tons of raid time and has dicey success prospects. It also makes you super vulnerable if another ballgroup or skilled small-man bombing group shows up. Because if you get Negated and bombed while taking that sort of pressure you are absolutely dunzo.

Not sure you’re understanding my post here entirely as I’m asking for a more effective counter to ballgroups. That’s literally the entire post. That’s what myself and others have been asking for. Maybe I need to word it differently.

yourhpgod · March 3

The only effective counter is another ball group with negates or HP Tanking. Its not everyone's cup of tea but it works. I did a mini test today.

The incoming information as we can see by what goes on in cyrodiil, is that ball groups are fine .
Who ever zos listens to enjoys that type of game play most likely their stream team. Its been brought up so much in the past.]

*edited to add hp tanking

Veinblood1965 · March 3

YandereGirlfriend wrote: »

xFocused wrote: »

malistorr wrote: »

Agree with the posters here. It's cool that ZOS wants to incentivize group play I guess by making these groups more powerful than just 12 solo players. But when there is nothing that can kill them but another huge ball group I think that makes for bad gameplay. ZOS obviously disagrees or they would have already changed things. It's yet another example of how out of touch they are with their player base. This is not bashing, it is simply pointing out reality. Most PVP players are solo players or players who group up with their guildmates but aren't comped. The current state of the game is that you either die to these groups or you go to another keep and have to constantly run away from them. That's not what makes for a fun game in my opinion or that of most everyone I've played with in Cyrodiil.

I definitely remember being a new player and getting hard-farmed by 1vXers in towers and I even made some ancient posts here on the forum talking about how those players obviously needed nerfs because 12 randoms should always be able to kill a smaller group of players. But that was just the frustrated newb in me talking and it soon became clear that, no, those players were actually just way better than me at the game so it made sense that I died to them.

A ballgroup is that sweaty premade group of 1vXers hard-farming 12 inside of a resource tower but scaled-up.

Same here. Now i still go to the Non-CP zones just to get my tickets without interruption. What was fun this year is I went to non-CP Bruma to get my quest and two NB's where there and killed me inside the building while I was taking my quest. I came back, popped a detect pot and killed one of them. I stealthed out and waited on the other to rez his buddy and then killed him. They came back and I waited on them to gank a quester picking up their quest and I killed them again lol. They left.

Long ago i died all the time to this sort of thing. It's just like PVE you learn your toon and adjust to the situation.

xFocused · March 3

Veinblood1965 wrote: »

YandereGirlfriend wrote: »

xFocused wrote: »

malistorr wrote: »

Agree with the posters here. It's cool that ZOS wants to incentivize group play I guess by making these groups more powerful than just 12 solo players. But when there is nothing that can kill them but another huge ball group I think that makes for bad gameplay. ZOS obviously disagrees or they would have already changed things. It's yet another example of how out of touch they are with their player base. This is not bashing, it is simply pointing out reality. Most PVP players are solo players or players who group up with their guildmates but aren't comped. The current state of the game is that you either die to these groups or you go to another keep and have to constantly run away from them. That's not what makes for a fun game in my opinion or that of most everyone I've played with in Cyrodiil.

I definitely remember being a new player and getting hard-farmed by 1vXers in towers and I even made some ancient posts here on the forum talking about how those players obviously needed nerfs because 12 randoms should always be able to kill a smaller group of players. But that was just the frustrated newb in me talking and it soon became clear that, no, those players were actually just way better than me at the game so it made sense that I died to them.

A ballgroup is that sweaty premade group of 1vXers hard-farming 12 inside of a resource tower but scaled-up.

Same here. Now i still go to the Non-CP zones just to get my tickets without interruption. What was fun this year is I went to non-CP Bruma to get my quest and two NB's where there and killed me inside the building while I was taking my quest. I came back, popped a detect pot and killed one of them. I stealthed out and waited on the other to rez his buddy and then killed him. They came back and I waited on them to gank a quester picking up their quest and I killed them again lol. They left.

Long ago i died all the time to this sort of thing. It's just like PVE you learn your toon and adjust to the situation.

So, the solution being suggested here is that the solo and casual crowd should “adjust” to ball groups by doing what exactly? You can’t honestly expect all of the solo and casual crowd to build a BG of their own in order to adjust because not everyone enjoys that play style. The PvP population is already dwindling as it is, “newbies” as it was put aren’t going to want to come in, get steamrolled constantly by comp groups and then get told “oh well, adjust and get good”’

Iriidius · March 6

YandereGirlfriend wrote: »

xFocused wrote: »

malistorr wrote: »

Agree with the posters here. It's cool that ZOS wants to incentivize group play I guess by making these groups more powerful than just 12 solo players. But when there is nothing that can kill them but another huge ball group I think that makes for bad gameplay. ZOS obviously disagrees or they would have already changed things. It's yet another example of how out of touch they are with their player base. This is not bashing, it is simply pointing out reality. Most PVP players are solo players or players who group up with their guildmates but aren't comped. The current state of the game is that you either die to these groups or you go to another keep and have to constantly run away from them. That's not what makes for a fun game in my opinion or that of most everyone I've played with in Cyrodiil.

Spot on. Last night there was a 12 man that ended up taking a home keep from us, we left that keep, went all down to AD territory to grab our scroll and they were already there by the time we got the scroll out of the keep. Again, siege is useless, aoe skills to hinder them (caltrops, borrowed time etc..) are useless and most PvP players are usually just solo, casual players not comped out to fight these groups

What exactly are you trying to say here, though?

This is like expecting that a random Dungeon Finder group in theme builds (no shade to theme builds, I use them all the time in PvE!) should be able to compete with a premade group of veteran sweaties who planned their comp and regularly practice together to complete trifectas. The level of effort is not remotely the same so why are we expecting equivalent outcomes?

There are many reasons why pick-up groups often get rolled. Most of it comes down to the classic sweat vs. casual dichotomy plus things like general inexperience in PvP and lack of knowledge of game mechanics. Which is fine because we all start somewhere.

xFocused did not expect to compete with a veteran premade as a „ a random Dungeon Finder group in theme builds“ at doing trifectas.
His group left the keep attacked by ballgroup to not compete with them and went to a keep as far away from them as possible only tofind them there again.

This is more like going with a group build for normal base game dungeons into normal fungal grotto 1 and suddenly getting teleported into a vet DLC dungeon fight. And as the fight already startet you often cant even leave.

YandereGirlfriend wrote: »

I definitely remember being a new player and getting hard-farmed by 1vXers in towers and I even made some ancient posts here on the forum talking about how those players obviously needed nerfs because 12 randoms should always be able to kill a smaller group of players. But that was just the frustrated newb in me talking and it soon became clear that, no, those players were actually just way better than me at the game so it made sense that I died to them.

A ballgroup is that sweaty premade group of 1vXers hard-farming 12 inside of a resource tower but scaled-up.

Ballgroups if they were really only 12 1vXers in 1vX builds would be not worse as 12 1vXers in 1vX builds and not require nerfing.

But ballgroups are much stronger by sharing HoTs, heals, dmgshields, setprocs, buffs and the shared effect is not split but everyone gets full effect.

Imagine your friends share drinks irl and everyone drinks his glass/bottle empty then gives it full to all of his friends. It doesnt work this way, you have to split it. You cant produce more from nothing by sharing it.

xFocused · March 6

Iriidius wrote: »

YandereGirlfriend wrote: »

xFocused wrote: »

malistorr wrote: »

Agree with the posters here. It's cool that ZOS wants to incentivize group play I guess by making these groups more powerful than just 12 solo players. But when there is nothing that can kill them but another huge ball group I think that makes for bad gameplay. ZOS obviously disagrees or they would have already changed things. It's yet another example of how out of touch they are with their player base. This is not bashing, it is simply pointing out reality. Most PVP players are solo players or players who group up with their guildmates but aren't comped. The current state of the game is that you either die to these groups or you go to another keep and have to constantly run away from them. That's not what makes for a fun game in my opinion or that of most everyone I've played with in Cyrodiil.

Spot on. Last night there was a 12 man that ended up taking a home keep from us, we left that keep, went all down to AD territory to grab our scroll and they were already there by the time we got the scroll out of the keep. Again, siege is useless, aoe skills to hinder them (caltrops, borrowed time etc..) are useless and most PvP players are usually just solo, casual players not comped out to fight these groups

What exactly are you trying to say here, though?

This is like expecting that a random Dungeon Finder group in theme builds (no shade to theme builds, I use them all the time in PvE!) should be able to compete with a premade group of veteran sweaties who planned their comp and regularly practice together to complete trifectas. The level of effort is not remotely the same so why are we expecting equivalent outcomes?

There are many reasons why pick-up groups often get rolled. Most of it comes down to the classic sweat vs. casual dichotomy plus things like general inexperience in PvP and lack of knowledge of game mechanics. Which is fine because we all start somewhere.

xFocused did not expect to compete with a veteran premade as a „ a random Dungeon Finder group in theme builds“ at doing trifectas.
His group left the keep attacked by ballgroup to not compete with them and went to a keep as far away from them as possible only tofind them there again.

This is more like going with a group build for normal base game dungeons into normal fungal grotto 1 and suddenly getting teleported into a vet DLC dungeon fight. And as the fight already startet you often cant even leave.

YandereGirlfriend wrote: »

I definitely remember being a new player and getting hard-farmed by 1vXers in towers and I even made some ancient posts here on the forum talking about how those players obviously needed nerfs because 12 randoms should always be able to kill a smaller group of players. But that was just the frustrated newb in me talking and it soon became clear that, no, those players were actually just way better than me at the game so it made sense that I died to them.

A ballgroup is that sweaty premade group of 1vXers hard-farming 12 inside of a resource tower but scaled-up.

Ballgroups if they were really only 12 1vXers in 1vX builds would be not worse as 12 1vXers in 1vX builds and not require nerfing.

But ballgroups are much stronger by sharing HoTs, heals, dmgshields, setprocs, buffs and the shared effect is not split but everyone gets full effect.

Imagine your friends share drinks irl and everyone drinks his glass/bottle empty then gives it full to all of his friends. It doesnt work this way, you have to split it. You cant produce more from nothing by sharing it.

This is accurate. As I’ve stated before, I’m not even saying scrap the BG gameplay altogether, just give the solo and casual players a leg to stand on when it comes to fighting these groups since currently there seems to be no viable counter to them other than another comped group

Tonturri · March 6

Further limiting a player's ability to coordinate with another player is a quick an easy way to lose people. Two different players can put a DoT on the same target, so it doesn't make sense for two different players to be able to stack HoTs. I think there are much easier ways to go about fixing this.

1) Health creep and power/support creep in general. It's bonkers seeing 35-40k health nowadays, *easily*. Now this isn't necessarily an issue all on its own, but being able to do this while also still having excellent damage, procs, etc, is an issue.

2) Scribing shields are too strong. Giving everyone access to AoE absorbs is not working out and they should probably all be reduced by 25% at the absolute minimum. Scribing needs a serious examination, be that flat out nerfs, or changing the scaling of the shields (making them scale with health just as easily as they scale with max magicka doesn't seem to be working out).

3) #1 and #2 make HoTs too strong. The counter to HoTs is burst, but unless you have a bunch of people ulti dumping and negating, you don't even make a dent in groups that have 30-40k HP, every evasion buff, and 5-10k absorbs or more on top of that. There are some HoTs that could probably be reduced, though, or even just reduced in duration but increased in power/cost so that 100% uptime becomes more of a strain. Major/Minor evasion are also buffs that could be fiddled with to reduce the power of ball groups without harming unorganized players.

4) Another counter to HoTs is DoTs, but there are no equivalents. Most HoTs are sticky while most DoTs are ground targeted. The server hamster would probably die if I could blanket a blob with DoTs as easily as the healer blankets them with HoTs, though, so while this is a partial solution it can't be the only one. Make ranged DoT spreading more available.

5) Stamina is basically a non-issue now. Stats are so high and regen is so easy to get that I can't remember the last time I bothered thinking about stamina sustain. Also snowtreaders. Delete it, hard counters are bad (or change it to reduce snare effectiveness or something, or possibly boost sprinting, but total immunity is too strong).

6) Not the lowest hanging fruit, but changing weapon damage to contribute slightly less to healing while max stats contributes slightly more to healing and slightly less to damage could help curb stat creep issues. This could easily result in 'healing has gone down so we need even MOAR health as a buffet', though, and so needs to be done carefully.

7) Catch-all for certain sets and class imbalance. We all know what's wrong with RoA, rallying cry is ridiculous, and the amount of times 'generic ground-target circular AoE that pulses damage over time' shows up in different places is absurd.

xylena_lazarow · March 6

Tonturri wrote: »

Further limiting a player's ability to coordinate with another player is a quick an easy way to lose people.

How about more power in coordinating on the battlefield, less power in the comp spreadsheet.

Tonturri · March 6

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

Tonturri wrote: »

Further limiting a player's ability to coordinate with another player is a quick an easy way to lose people.

How about more power in coordinating on the battlefield, less power in the comp spreadsheet.

What are you quoting me for, if you read past the first sentence you'd see that I agree? Whatdoyouwantfromme.